Ah yes, a particularly brilliant piece of journalism from the Times. Some journo has read that the SARF is having to reduce from 5 to 4 crews per flight as a result of
PR 08 (money saving measures) and that SAR winchmen are already doing tours in the 'Stan as medical team leaders in the back of Chinooks and put 2 and 2 together resulting in a sloppy 5.
Quite how having a SAR helicopter in province will stop soldiers being blown up by roadside bombs is a little difficult to conceive
Apart from the performance problems mentioned earlier, none of our engineers would be able to deploy as they have all been civilianised!
Hey, if the man says go, we go but it would be an indication of how desperate things have got and how little either the top levels of the military or the ministers actually know about SAR and its lack of relevance to CSAR.
Lost - that's something to be proud of - one S92 only able to operate on one engine and the other U/S in the hangar - what was all that guff about modern SAR being the way forward
As for SARH - if it is all civilianised then there will be no deployability at all (personnel or aircraft) - something else to consider eh?