Military SAR Engineers
Given the huge amount of manpower used by the military SAR engineers to support a quite small number of ac I fear that the engineers are part of the problem rather than the solution. I know their are plenty of arguments about training and secondary duties etc but with 30 guys to look after 2 ac how bad can it be for the engineers. In the modern age this sort of manning simply costs too much and in a non warfighting part of the military is simply unsustainable. I am afraid Crab that plenty of civilian ac fly around safely and well looked after by civilian engineers who are inevitably far fewer in number than their military counterparts.
The military aircrew have regularly shown themselves to have high operational standards and could favourably match themselves against any comparable organisation. Is the same really true on the engineering front.