We can't leave the south coast (although in reality we have) without reflecting upon the SAR or Search and Rescue aspect of the UK, can we? (Ed. actually we could).
I learned to fly at RAF Finningley, which had been a nuclear V-bomber base but by then hosted navigation training in the form of the HS125 or Dominie; along with an SAR service comprising Sea Kings beside Westland Whirlwinds and Wessexes. I was offered a ride in the middle one, held out for a flying lesson cancelled due weather and thus missed out on both... the story of my life, if not those of One Direction.
Since then SAR in the UK has effectively been privatised and offered to Bristow, whose founder appeared at a mess dinner at the same airbase; speaking afterward about the ongoing wave of labour disputes back then in ways that might have made Margaret Thatcher blush. Bristow was though a UK success story and like all of the others, was sold to the US. So as with all else, we are paying foreign shareholders for what we used to do ourselves.
What caught my ear recently was news that the people running the service have asked crews ~ the dangling ones and not the pilots ~ to provide services for free, presumably inspired by the RNLI or lifeboat service. Difference being though that the elderly want to leave their savings to the latter, but few would consider doing so for the former.
The way forward would appear to be more extensive use of aerial drones like the 'cam-copter' from Austria seen above. They've four of them now, and prices aren't quoted as ever with taxpayer-funded enterprises, but suffice to say the Thai Navy spent over $18 million investing in a couple (tho' they come with a broader package of add-ons).
The argument for maritime drones meanwhile, without wanting to appear the sort of single-issue nut-job that people's cyberspace, is that extended range aerial drones are likely to remain prohibitively expensive in future ~ albeit a fraction of the cost of using the sort of helicopter seen alongside ~ whereas a network of drones loitering at sea provides broader coverage at a fraction of the cost.
And they could, anticipating the counter-argument that they don't provide a birds-eye view, deploy an aerial drone of their own... self-deploying types already already on the rise.
Figuratively and literally.
