I estimate based on 25 hours/month with taskings on top I would expect you must be flying about 450-500 hours a year? Is this correct?
10 hours/month is too simplistic a calculation not taking in to account leave, sim training and various other commitments that remove a crew member from his/her flying duties. The estimated work pattern for BHL crew is 7-8 shifts a month restricted by FTL and ultimately the WTD of 2000 hours. This equates to about 15 hours a month, with taskings on top you're looking at roughly 25 hours a month. If that's flown over an average of 7 shifts in the month you're in the air for over 3.5 hours per shift. That doesn't sound insignificant to me. In fact it almost exactly reflects my own flying for the last 12 months having taken my full compliment of leave and 2 sim trips.
Somewhat simplistic. On many occasions, the tasking will occur before the crew go training, meaning that there isn't time (or desire) to train after a job/jobs. On some days, no training gets done because the weather is terrible or the aircraft is limited on hours. Over a number of years, I always achieved between 300 and 400 hours a year, and I doubt I was the fleet leader in terms of hours flown.
The other point to bear in mind is that SAROps may go on for a number of hours, but time spent searching and/or in transit is rarely useful training, whereas on a training sortie one can concentrate on a variety of the key skills. A 90-120 minute training sortie will typically generate much more useful training for the crew than a 6-8 hour SAROp.
It's important when entering a discussion to have a clue what you're talking about. It adds so much to your credibility. Mil SAR still work 24 hour shifts, as will Bristow. On downwind decks it's not the aircraft that's downwind.
Does it require 25 hours per pilot per month - no. If it does, we need new pilots.
Apart from the other problems with your argument, the benefit of planning to have 20-25 hours a month is that, when an individual or crew doesn't get the chance to train for a period (leave, sickness, busy run of SAROps, shortage of airframe hours or whatever) they will still have accrued sufficient training in the last 6-12 months that they are probably still proficient. If somebody is getting 10 hours a month routinely, and then has a training famine, this makes it more likely that their proficiency will drop to an unacceptable level.