Originally Posted by
ORAC
UDT,
No implication of illegality, just risk. I accept the arguments against fighters but believe primary 3D radar would be prudent.
Again over 25 years ago, but I’ve been controlling fighters trailing Bears down the North Sea IMC at FL360 and had to call LATCC to advise them that they had non-squawking traffic 30nm north southbound on a collision co-alt and avoiding action was advisable.
(The first response was that “I have priority get them to turn - who’ controlling them anyway!”. To which my reply was that I wasn’t sure, but probably Moscow….
If I have a comparable situation in the past it was the Cyprus FIR back in the mid 1970s where we monitored and provided a radar advisory service for numerous friendly NATO recce/ESM aircraft monitoring the various wars and areas of interest in the eastern Med and observed all the other aircraft operating in the same area.
Nicosia at the time provided a procedural service and we’re blissfully unaware of all of them. The day they switched on their first radar they just about cr***ed themselves and the telephone line between us was heavily used fir a few weeks whilst they became aware of who was who and what they were doing.
No arguments from me on PSR cost wise, but it would also run into the issue of lack of controllers in the IAC. Pre COVID, as soon as a controller in there got their hours and met their minimum service in the Defence Forces, the good/sensible ones jumped ship to IAA/NATS etc due vastly superior remunerations on offer. They barely have enough controllers to cover a small surveillance/danger area in the region around Casement. To have full surveillance over the entire island and up to a few hundred nm off the coast, they’d need to massively recruit, and build an adequate control center. More realistic would be to run the PSR feed into Dublin and Shannon ACCs and have us use it. I’m always happy to have more tools available to do my job.
And yes nighttime medivac is privately operated ex DUB, because it was outsourced after the IAC could no longer do it due lack of manpower.