At the time of the July bombings (24/7), the RAF SARF generated 12 serviceable and ready to go aircraft and crews within 2 hours - fortunately they were not needed but that was 12 fully SAR capable crews just from the 6 RAF flights. Is anyone else going to provide that capability???????
I agree with Crab, no one else could have provided that response. However, the point that jumps off the page to me is that it was a level of response that was not needed. IIRC the only tasking was a bus run from Leeds to London that any commercial operator from LBA could have done.
My question would have to be, how do we know that we are not overprovisioned today in terms of military 2nd standby?