This is all so very sad. 3 good guys dead and two valuable aircraft destroyed. Previous warnings missed and lessons not learned - again.
Apart from the lack of a CWS the other thing that screams at me is the lack of an effective, automatic PLB that works on 406Mhz.
As 121.5/243.0 are no longer monitored (and DF capabilities are limited anyway) SARBE 7 is a bit obsolete IMHO. Also, reductions of SAR capability are not good either, so taken together rescue times could become a
lot longer that most airecrew are led to believe, especially if there is also a shortage of rear crew - no winching possible - or aircraft un-serviceability means that a more distant SAR asset needs to be tasked.
I believe that individual crews could legitimately say that some sorties would be too risky to carry out in peacetime training. I shudder to think if there had been a QRA mid-air say just 100 miles further to the north-east involving a 1.30 transit. The one survivor, no immersion suit, water at 12 degrees, and not in a dingy spent 75 minutes in the sea and only just survived.
I don't envy future F-35B crews, with their single engine, if they ever got tasked with doing low level maritime attack profiles in the same vein as the Bucc or Tonka if SAR capabilities are stretched so thinly. All it would take is a big fat herring gull down the intake.........
MB