The whole impression of the material produced so far seems to reflect a cloud cuckoo land
As a lifelong civilian, whilst I have no wish to criticise my military and ex-military ATC colleagues who as far as ATSOCAS is concerned are to my mind, the 'experts' since with the exception of Brize Norton and Lyneham, this is the UK middle and lower airspace environment in which they are trained to operate, one of the difficulties that many people have identified is the imbalance of military and ex-military personnel to civil personnel in CAA departments such as its Airspace Policy directorate. This inevitably results in a lack of appreciation of the constraints and demands of running a civil commercially-driven ATC unit where simply indenting for equipment or staff just doesn't happen. Equally, civil pilots operating outside controlled airspace are not subject to the level of prescriptive rules that military pilots have to observe under military flying regulations.
In summary, the civil world is not the cosy cut-and-dried prescriptive and orderly world that military aviation inhabits; and unfortunately, a significant number of the military or ex-military policy-makers in some of the CAA's departments, appear unable or unwilling to grasp this fact.
Taking just one example of this apparent lack of appreciation, the provision of a RAS to a military fast-jet, trainer or helicopter is a completely different situation to providing the same RAS to a Boeing 737 or Boeing 757 with civilian passengers on board, particularly if the phase of flight means that they're not all seated and wearing seat belts.
The truth is 'one size' just doesn't fit all.
