Tourist said;
In other words, there is a price on life, and long range SAR doesn't even come close to making economic sense.
and I tend to agree with him. In a very old thread this cost of a life was discussed and an MoD paper produced that placed it at £4M per life at about 2000 prices. It was the C130 XV179 thread I think, when discussing the refusal to fit ESF.
There are many MoD projects that have had to make this decision, in recent years most of them Army/Infantry related. Try managing a programme when the beancounters are telling you to conduct annual trials for umpteen years to establish a statistically valid sample proving how many lives you'll save. While at the same time fielding questions from the same BCs as to why the programme is slipping. And trying to work out why your trails cannot be held as the same BCs have chopped your funding and there's no trials troops available anyway. A very real example by the way. If only the Service Inquiries and Coroners knew....
Sometimes best, easier and cheaper to bite the bullet and spend the money; which, by the way, we have in plenty if only MoD would stop wasting it. Which they steadfastly refuse to.
But that doesn't excuse the probability that, in this case, the Government continues to be signatory to an agreement to provide coverage some way West of Ireland. Has this obligation been formally ditched?