Crab I love the way you twist everything I guess it is fortunate most readers of this forum understand your play with words, even so it must be great to be so clever. The 2000 hours is duty time not a limitation of how long you can fly within those duty hours so yes please bring on the NVG training most of the crews will welcome that and remember many of them are your old pals. How long do you give them before they become amateurs incapable of SAR after leaving the RAF? My experience is they are good and just continue to get better in the role even as a civvy.
Ref: 2000 hours it has been in situ since 2004 and Bristows did stick to the rules with a lot of moving people around the country to catch up with the problem. It was difficult initially but was achieved. More difficult now with two aircraft types especially being new types and not an abundance of crews type rated, but it will be sorted.
Ref: the 139 I understand like you, with many contacts carrying out the role it is probably not suitable for UK SAR, but please remember who selected it, there was only one MCA member on that SAR H Team no matter how much you try to blame it all on the MCA.