Sun Who,
Your post leaves me even more worried!
Rushed solutions are often bad solutions and if the services are compelled to extend military SAR, despite funding issues, the dosh will have to be found - hence my earlier desparately worried posts.
If we track back to the formation of SAR services, I think we find RAF Coastal and Fighter Commands competing for a slice of the action. The 'funded' task was to gather in aircrew in extremis. The 'let's save all civvies on the side of the mountain - any mountain' came later and acknowledged that there were relatively few military call outs, so we needed to do something in between and a very successful and worthy aim it has been, with stonkingly good results.
The armed forces 'can do' attitude has got them into trouble many a time but this is a sort of reverse scenario. How do we back out of SAR unless there is reliable replacement? I submit it can't be done.
At every turn and with every government, the forces eventually get called on to do something unfunded and because nobody else can. Olympics are but the latest example. While all this is going on, the services are being dumped on from a great height by politicians and with a muted response from those who lead us.
Old Duffer