Hopefully this will put the 'waste of money' debate to bed. But, it will need an honest answer from the doubters.
My unit costs @£1.3M per year to run.
In 2014 we had 115 misper searches.
Of those, 6 or 7 were very close to death when
we found them in isolated locations.
This works out at £185,000 per life saved.
Now, RomeoPapa, be honest with me, if one of your relatives were captured by ISIS and appeared in a video in an orange jumpsuit, kneeling in the desert, would you pay a £185,000 ransom to save their life?
Or would it be a waste of money?
Assuming you say yes, and we agree that £185,000 to save a life is value for money, then everything else an air support unit does for the rest of the year is surely fantastic value for money, because the cost has been allocated to the lives saved.
Looking for a cat up a tree becomes free and is therefore value for money!
Just goes to show that as a bean counter you can prove and justify everything you want to.
