jimf671

COASTguard - the clue is in the name really.

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So why are they taking over UKSAR when so much of it is overland???

shetlander

I think it depends on location really. As up until Bristow came back into SAR the Coastguard had the full responsibility of scrambling and the ARCC used to go through the Coastguard for tastings.

It's the Coastguard that still pages the crews when on 45mins standby.

This is still the case on the South Coast.

The ARCC will eventually, sooner rather than later head to the National Maritme Operations Centre, near Southampton and be under Coastguard Control.

jimf671

ARCC became the tasking authority after Wednesday 31st March 2010.

(The report I wrote about my visit to ARCC on that day specifically notes that change.)

Some players may choose to dress it up some other way though.

jimf671

No definitive answer to that has escaped into the wild.

My understanding is that with the Coastguard, on behalf of the DfT, having been the sole existing purchaser of civilian SAR helicopter services for HM Gov, they were in a prime position to take the reigns. However, in the background, nobody else wanted it. Not the Home Office, not Health, not Evironment, not Business, and certainly not our dear friends at the MoD.

The story goes (please correct me if you have better info) that when JHC was formed a decision was made by AVM Niven not to include SAR Force and effectively its fate was sealed. Soon after, war fighting in far off hot places, and hot and high places, became the important issue. SAR Force was the unwanted homeless stray. (Many here know a lot more about SK support and availability west of Suez during that period than I do.)

As the DfT eventually, laboriously, got a half-baked unified contract together for the four bases, and repeatedly stumbled over itself in efforts to quantify and contract a completely civilian service, other forces were coming into play. The same war fighting that was helping to orphan SAR Force at the MoD was also promoting ITAR enforcement in the USA. This would have been a bit of a challenge to the existing DfT/MCA skill set and may be responsible for the lack of progress with CivSAR equipment specifications. Meanwhile, aircraft carriers were being planned. In the absence of orders for escort destroyers , it was obvious that the MoD was going to be paying for, em, eh, ... a Search And Rescue Helicopter capability. A Royal Navy Merlin helicopter checks out HMS Queen Elizabeth | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Somehow, the monstrous freak that was SARH25, was appropriately euthanased (HM Treasury already begging for an opportunity and it spectacularly arrived). Galvanized into action, the DfT came up with two half-decent contract processes in quick succession (a British public sector first?).

A year from now, the Main UK SAR Helicopter Service contract will be a week away and the first operational crews will have been training in-area for nearly four months. Their training in-area will have commenced during the same month as the ISAF withdrawal deadline which draws to a close a period of repatriation of UK military helicopters and crews, many of whom might prefer the occasional real job as an alternative to sim, x-box, air test and rugby.

At Strasbourg, the European Parliament continues to take the position that the existence of a Single Market makes the continued existence of Member State coastguard services unnecessary. The morphing of the HM Coastguard into UK Rescue, along with development of the appropriate range of additional skill sets, would make a certain amount of sense and provide the organisation with some kind of future regardless of the march of the EMSA empire. Whether that is a bearable outcome at the Southampton care home for ageing salts is anybody's guess.

(Was that OK Crab?)

Vie sans frontieres

I was thinking more of for those going through the Managed Transition. It is for them that time will be tightest. On a concurrently running thread, a load of experienced ex-military pilots bemoaned how paltry their conversions to type have been in civil aviation compared to what they experienced in the military. Therefore it is encouraging that Bristow have declared nine and six month conversions for pilots and rearcrew respectively. I am just curious about how and where those months will be spent. There will be an awful lot of people to convert in a relatively short space of time. I imagine the NVG package will take about a month or so but how do the rest of the training syllabuses break down?

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Jim, it was meant as a rhetorical question but I think you have done a pretty good job there - possibly missing the expansionist desires of the Chief Coastguard in the early 2000s who wanted the same status as the US Coastguard.

Evalu8ter

The rumour re SAR and the formation of JHC that was doing the rounds was that the UKSARF Hierarchy wasn't really interested in the quasi-tactical aspects (D-SAR, CSAR, TRAP etc) that we're being trialled at the time and were keen to retreat to UK based SAR; this was not part of JHC's agenda so SARF was allowed to carry on its merry way. After all, no-one was going to chop it were they?

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That's because it didn't take a rocket scientist to see that hovering over boats/cliffs/people in the water in a non-tactical environment didn't include most of the skill sets required for a behind-enemy-lines, tactical recovery.

SAR and CSAR/JPR are poles apart and most people in SAR knew that - it was only to try and please the 'if it ain't green, it ain't military' diehards that it was even suggested as a way to try and protect SAR.

In 18 months we will say farewell to what has been an outstanding and world-leading capability within the UK military - a sad and pointless loss permitted by the same people who allowed the Navy to lose its aircraft carriers

jimf671

Gimpies in Jayhawks?

No, probably the budget would be nice. ("This is all about cost you know.")


Poles apart? Helicopters, rescue and medical in one package? Different corners of the same chess board maybe.

CSAR is still far too much of a void in the British ORBAT. With my Gunner hat on, a couple of days working with the USAF guys leaves you rather unimpressed with our efforts.


Agreed.

Imagine what could have been achieved with S-92 and AW189.

shetlander

ARCC may have been the official tasking authority however they did not have any means to scramble the flight! The coastguard did!

jimf671

No show without punch.

Art of flight

UK CSAR Capabilities.

During a coffee break at the RAF Mountbatten survival course in 1986 it became apparent in conversation that the 2 Harrier pilots thought the entire AAC had the single role of picking them up from behind enemy lines. Something to do with the 'Army Co-operation' part of 1 Sqns title I guess...

ANGAF

"SAR and CSAR/JPR are poles apart and most people in SAR knew that. "

How you get there may differ, but once there, it is the same. Hoisting or landing for land pickups, coupled modes over water. The nomenclature is different, techniques may differ, and speed takes precedence, but helicopters hovering and hoisting are the same. A paramedic from a RN/RAF cab is little different from a PJ - if you ignore the tactical kit.
- Thou shall not worship a Golden Cab.

Vie sans frontieres

It rhymes with rowlocks.

MightyGem

Hmm...I think not. PJs bring a little more to the party than some tactical kit. And I'm not denigrating RN/RAF SAR rear crew.

jimf671

Maybe just a bit.

A British winchweight operates in some awful conditions as a matter of routine and that helps shift the balance in their favour a little. However, for all the amazing work, and the gongs and parchments in several cases, I doubt whether any of those guys would themselves make this comparison.

How would the situation change here anyway? I dare say some waste of space at Abbey Wood has already done the sums and said why would we spend all that money on training a Sergeant.

dingo9

Shifting the thread back to Manston.
Developers say Manston Airport is a suitable site for housing development as uncertainty remains over its future

Bristow have started building at Humber and Inverness. Any signs of work starting at Manston or are there genuine concerns from within Bristow it'll be sold to developers?

satsuma

If the Manston issue is giving Bristow a bit of a problem, why not move the base planned for Manston to Norwich and shift Humberside further north to Newcastle? That way the south of England isn't quite so SAR-base heavy, the 189 goes to a base where Bristow are already introducing it for Oil & Gas and north-east England/south-east Scotland won't feel the loss of Boulmer SAR quite so keenly.

There you are Bristow. I don't charge consultancy fees.

Jerry Can

Preferably before I sell my house near Boulmer