Coastguard
Until a few years ago, the UK Coastguard had manned lookouts, little more than huts, dotted around the coastline keeping a visual lookout, for people in trouble or smugglers.
These were abandoned as a cost cutting measure in favour of a few shiny co-ordinating stations, with all the whistles & bells.
This of course means that to get into trouble one must first have at least a VHF radio.
Re-manning these lookouts with auxillary staff, day & night with NVG's etc, would not only save lives ( both at sea and at cliffs etc ) but would be a very handy layer of defence, for relative peanuts.
I always thought that on the life-saving issue alone the decision to bin the lookouts was criminal, now we have drug smugglers & terrorists doubly so.