Originally Posted by
llamaman
I suspect the pour soul(s) who are denied a rescue, or face a significant delay, don't really care why a particular callsign is unable to attend. The fact remains that bases are routinely declaring non-NVG capability despite the new service being sold to the public as "better" than the one it was replacing. It may well be in time but that doesn't excuse the less than ideal situation in which the UK SAR service finds itself. And before I inevitably get accused of whinging for the sake of it I'm not, just stating the facts.
Let's get real here.
The service that has existed pre-2015 has had up to 4 providers and all of them had major short-comings. There were reduced numbers of aircraft in some flights, poor aircraft availability, poor contract specification, absence or late introduction of critical role equipment, resources diverted to war-fighting, poor and unco-ordinated reporting, no de-icing, poor communications, and late introduction of a unified tasking regime.
Add to that the 60 year public love affair with the pretty yellow helicopter and the recent 'support our troops' ethos on the milSAR side and the contractors being constantly held back and tripped up by 40 years of rubbish contract specifications from the Coastguard on the civSAR side and a less level playing field would be difficult to find (so long as we discount the pitch at Kinlochshiel Shinty Club: but at least there you get to change ends at half time
).
The UK's first entirely planned SAR helicopter service is under way and is out there doing dozens of jobs every month.
There are several things that could have gone a bit better.
- The Coastguard contract technical specs could have been sorted out 30+ years ago.
- The 24 year introduction phase for NVG could have been shorter.
- CAP 999 could have been sorted out 20 years earlier.
- SAR rear-crew licensing could have been part of that.
- Unified and co-ordinated standards of public reporting of SAR activity as identified 14 years ago.
- The AW189 could have been on time.
- Manston could have stayed open.
- The roof could have stayed on the Inverness base.
Originally Posted by
llamaman
... ... Senior people who hold gravitas within the SAR community (both civilian and military) read this forum. If we all toed the party line and harped on about how great everything was then they would be getting a skewed picture of the reality.
Toeing the party line is exactly what we have all been doing through decades of milSAR.
.