I would have thought the biggest cost drivers are likely to be manpower costs (wages, benefits and training) and 25 years of financing, not platform acquisition and through life support.
Think about the cost of crewing 12 bases with a minimum of 5 crews - not to mention the engineering, support staff and management, then add annual wage, benefits, insurance, sickness and recurring training cost escalations and program financing over 25 years and you begin to wonder whether platform acquisition and maintenance is likely to be in the top three front-runners when it comes to through life costs.
Neither am I naive enough to think that that any of the senior management in Vancouver, Owego, Southampton or Havant is thinking improvement is number one on their list of priorities. Yes it’s a key driver, but this is a business venture and first and foremost it’s about profit without which a company goes under and then where would SAR-H be? After all, isn’t that why UK Air Rescue pulled out?