As one who is somewhat familiar with military aviation, I would point out to Mr. Paine that a main requirement for the military is most likely the need for the raft to fit into a parachute seat pack...as the one I had did. This is a teeny-weeny space! None of the sailboats we use for the SHTP are quite so space limited. The parachute seatpack life raft is an attempt to give a ditched aviator a fighting chance for survival, without adding to cockpit space requirements. In 1984, I could not even get the SSS to specify what sort of life raft they required. Just a "liferaft", they said. I kept trying, to no avail. As the race date approached, I simply had to assume (logically?) that they would require an "offshore qualified" life raft. So I bought one (88lbs) and used it for two races until a competitor in the 1886 race got away with what she called a "helicopter liferaft". Looked just one I had brought from Vietnam, even had no canopy. I had a canopy attached to mine and ran with it in 1992. That resulted in the rule addition requiring a self erecting canopy. The SSS still does not require an "offshore" raft, which is fine with me. I never even bought a liferaft until the SHTP rules required them. Did a round trip to French Polynesia and three passages to Hawaii without a raft, so never have been passionate about requiring them. Were I the SSS, I would increase the stringency of the SHTP raft requirement, not reduce it...liability and all that!