Sea King has proved a pretty good cab but the airframes etc are now approaching or past their sell by date.
New Sea Kings continued to be built into the 90s so many are nowhere near the hours of the original Mk1s. I think the tooling was scrapped after the 3A buy in 93-94. The oddity of the SK fleet is that most of the ASaCs, which by common consent are superb, are original Mk1s. This was because they were meant to be purely temporary, with Merlins being the preferred/best bid for the upgrade to Mk7. But then the RN insisted on specifying new Sea Kings, rejecting Merlin. As new ones couldn’t be built, and the RN wouldn’t swap the old cabs for newer ones which were surplus, the old ones had to be modified. Because of this, DGA(N) withdrew support for the Mk7 programme.
First question then: would a fleet replacement of Sea Kings by new Sea Kings with updated cockpits and other goodies be an answer ie is the spec of the current Sea King 3A still fit for purpose?
At the RAF’s insistence, to save money the spec of the Mk3A was actually downgraded from what had been developed in the 80s. Other parts of it are excellent. I think most would say the 3A is fit for purpose. They are 25 years newer than most of the Mk7s, so someone will make good use of them.