Crab,
I have close friends in the SAR world and am under no illusion as to the difficulty of acheiving Op Captaincy on a SAR flight. I think with the Op tempo as it is today aircrew from all 3 services are being thrown into the fire quicker than ever before. I think if we could the army would try and reduce the pipline even further, probably a mistake!.
Within the SH fleet and in particular the Puma are some very young crews. I know that when I was fresh out of the box I was very gratefull to have my time as a Buckshee pilot with a Senior to hold my hand. Indeed I was under no illusion as to my status and capability.
The notion that a Flt Lt fresh from the OCU would be ready to rock is a dangerous one!. Although you do say that the AAC has "raised its game", I gained wings 5 years ago and knew some pretty !!!! pilots who scraped the course from all services.
The system utilised by the army generally works well and weeds out any trouble cases!....usually!.
The SAR force has some very stringent checks and balances to ensure quality (and to get rid of pilots who dont flying in the mountains at night!), and quite rightly so.
BTW the tripling of officers into the AAC has more to do with the short sighted planning of a couple of SO1's in influential places rather than an AH "masterplan". The problem then arises when you have more officers flying than ever before and there is no career profile for them!. Meanwhile the bones of the AAC flying fraternity(the SNCO's) are marginalised.
Ralph