We all know that even the most modern ADS-B equipped Boeing and Airbus airline aircraft use TCAS, not ADS-B for displaying nearby aircraft – of course, TCAS works with any standard mode C or mode S transponder.
No TCAS isn't for the purposes of traffic displays, it for traffic avoidance after all else has failed. To turn off the MSSR radars (enroute) it will require the best part of the fleet to have some other sort of surveillance, will it not? Or are just proposing that aircraft get separated procedurally in your fabulous Class E airspace? Won't matter what sort of transponder you have if you are more than 100NM from a Class C tower then you'll not be 'painting' on an ATC scope without ADS-B.
TCAS is good enough for airline aircraft to be given traffic information by, why does Airservices want a more expensive ADS-B unit, which transmits the call sign of the aircraft back to the Airservices computer and this will only happen in about 10% of Australia at low levels?
Do you understand this stuff at all; really, you proclaim certain levels of savvy and expertise yet the basics demonstrated right here are fundamentally flawed. 10% coverage is a furphy; there will be 25 ADS-B sites for the upper program and depending on how this process goes up to something like 80 others... That's going to be a little more than 10% I'm sure you will agree.
You have previously claimed with 9 or so MSSR sites that Australia has 20% radar coverage; yet with 25 ADS-B boxes giving the same (or better) range the coverage will be less; it doesn't stack-up and you know it.
Poor little terry towel hat heads will be seen by those naughty ATCs, the sky is falling the sky is falling! Give it a rest man!
why are they being provided with a “free” ADS-B unit.
Any chance that it's to replicate the existing levels of safety; i.e. "VFR traffic, 10 o'clock 2 NM intentions unknown.; rather than your favourite un-alerted see and avoid.