BEagle,
Regarding your first point:
Delivering fodder to livestock in winter comes under the terms of..
Military Aid to the Civil Community....
Military Aid to the Civil Community - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
While I am no expert on the matter, I believe costs are incurred, and paid by the ministry of agriculture (or whatever it is called this week) in the case of feeding animals. A variety of military assets, e.g. SH, can be used as well as/instead of SAR helos.
If the contractor is to be reimbursed on a case by case basis I see no reason why a private SAR organization would not be willing to provide such a service. Indeed it was probably part of the original contract. I also consider skill sets would not be an issue in terms of completing the task of feeding livestock!!
Whether the ministry of agriculture is willing to pay for the service is probably another matter entirely....
While not wishing to criticize BEagle personally, this particular point illustrates, assuming that I am correct, that coming to the forum having already done one's research can save a lot of time and effort for everyone.
Reference your second point, I see no reason why a private SARH organization could not deal with a Boscastle type incident. You specifically mention "the level of rapid response" - I would assume the contract for the SARH privatization specified the response times required, which are no doubt the same as the current military (and civil -don't forget the coastguard) ones. Indeed, given that the S-92 has a higher transit speed than a Sea King you could argue that the overall response of the proposed new system would have been
FASTER. My
personal opinion, for what it is worth, is that any private company would seek initially to recruit ex-military SAR aviators. They know the job, the local area issues, and they might be cheaper to hire (as most contractors seem to assume all e-military people already have a pension) to start with. But I fully admit I haven't researched this particular issue....
