ATCROCAS are mainly driven by the military, because the provision of services inside CAS does not meet their needs ( or so they believe). The concept of filing IFR plans to go on a low level sortie for a fast jet jock when the weather is not too good at the departure aerodrome but not bad where he wants to go wouldn't work. They would go VFR irrespective of what the weather was like then pull up and be forced into an emergency because they could not see where they were going. Yes, it happens all the time, I had a formation of ac depart just the other week that were adamant they were VFR despite the cloud base being 400ft, on departure they all asked for RAS and separation from each other.
Yes, the rules need sorting out; the conditions of RIS are now over a page of A4 long. No pilot commits that to memory and after all, it is them who receive the service not me, I just provide it. At the moment, RAS is a totally unworkable service if you try to abide by the rules. Some provision about separation between other IFR ac and traffic info on Known VFR and avoiding action on unknown would be good. Personally, I don’t think we can continue in the same vain for much longer. The EU airspace harmonisation process will take care of that and we should concentrate on the provision of services inside CAS what ever they are defined as in the future. Uncontrolled airspace should be left to the likes of exercise training areas and danger areas where the military can fill its boots but no service would be provided, as stipulated by ICAO. The remainder should be designated accordingly, this will mean the military and civil ATS providers would be responsible for portions of controlled airspace and far more harmonisation on procedures would be required.