Jungliebeefer - everyone knows the Sea King is old and tired and costs a lot to maintain but to claim big savings will be made by buying V expensive new toys off the shelf just because you can use less engineers is simply not true.
Then add the expense of reinventing a SAR service that already exists (RAF and RN) under the banner of DfT and, as a taxpayer, I have to ask why not just give the military new aircraft and crack on. The military is already using civilian aircraft with military crews and it will become more and more widespread over the next few years.
The dogma about warfighting first has reduced many areas of the UK Mil to theatre-specific forces with little corporate memory of anything other than Afghanistan. Anyone in SH or jungly force doing EW training for example? If you keep chopping out what is not needed for Afghanistan then we will end up in few years (if we ever withdraw from there) with a very lopsided capability and a huge training burden to recover the lost skills.
So, leave mil SAR in the mil, give us the new aircraft promised for son of SARH and stop wasting taxpayers money reinventing something that doesn't need reinventing.