It appears that Britain is outsourcing its entire helicopter-based SAR operations to a private company with a 11 billion dollar 25 year contract.  It will replace all the SAR assets currently operated by the various military services in Britain. 

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2010/02/10/Britain-outsources-search-rescue-service/UPI-16371265841423/

Now SAR is organized quite a bit differently here in the US, but I could definetely see as something that could impact the USCG and some AF units here in the US if the feds decided to try something similar. 

The US is a heck of a lot bigger than Great Britain. You'd need assets scattered all around this country. It would be a very big organization with thousands of paid people. Likely with no cost benefit. That said Lockheed owns Flight Service now, so who knows.

I would love to see "private industry" swoop in and tell the Sheriff they are taking over a SAR Op.  Britain is an island.  A few strategically located bases and youd have it covered.  The US.....Ummmm, no.

For perspective:

Great Britain:     84,556 sq m

US of A:     3,794,101 sq m

That's the equivalent of 1 good-sized US state.

(based on info from the money-grubbing, error-prone, waste of time known as Wikipedia).

Quote from: Smithsonia on February 11, 2010, 04:03:59 AM
The US is a heck of a lot bigger than Great Britain.

So true, yet it just doesn't grasp the magnitude of it. I'm currently deployed with a few Brits attatched to our unit, and they commonly use the comparison Great Britain = Oregon in size.... Talk about size difference. We could never creat such an agreement, the cost would be exponential that of the UK.

Comparison of land mass:

UK: About 84,556 sq mi of land/terretorial water
US: About 3,794,100 sq mi of land/terretorial water

If we accounted for cost by land mass comparison, we would have to pay roughly $493,460,000,000 for 25 years... That'd be one rich company real quick.

We have too many military assets and good volunteer SAR organizations in the US for this to be of use.

Edit: Good call Eclipse, looked up the same info at the same time.

^^^^^^^
TACP;
Only $493 Billion to replace CAP for 25 years. I'd take that deal. Give me the money and a 15 minute head start and you bet I'd take that deal.

Here's a link with more details and history of the British program. Australia has also privatized part of its air-sea rescue program (linked in the article). There's a member of CAP Talk who is involved with the Australian program.

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/british-searchandrescue-a-billion-pound-partnership-02271/

Mike

Quote from: Eclipse on February 11, 2010, 04:31:38 AM(based on info from the money-grubbing, error-prone, waste of time known as Wikipedia).

LOL.

Anyway, the problem with this was sort of alluded to by Rob. There is no single jurisdiction responsible for SAR in the United States. Many states have agencies responsible for SAR which could be the local sheriff, or some state agency. It would be a nightmare of organizing all of the interested parties together to put this sort of thing into motion.