Dick, I flew RPT twins into Willy for quite some years, if quite some years ago, and I have to say the RAAF controllers there were sweetness and light compared with others I could mention, (but let’s not go there today), doing a very good job in getting us in in between their F18s.
Like others who’ve responded before me, I’m more than a little bemused by some of your comments - like
In the UK, due to its limited airspace, the fighter jocks share the Class G airspace with GA. There has been an occasional midair – but at very low levels, mostly with helicopters.
I’ve added the boldface because there isn’t a smiley that I’m aware of that denotes incredulity.
You also show a surprising lack of knowledge of the system you were one (twice?) in charge of when you make statements like
We presently have our fighters screaming through Class G airspace at low levels. Mostly they are not following pre-organised routes (as per the USA) and the safety is obtained from the fact that the probability of hitting one in most parts of Australia is extremely small.
Designated Low Jet Routes have been in place in Australia for well over 30 years, and the RAAF is – or certainly was – very careful to follow them. LJRs give civilian pilots (who read their Notams) notice of where the fast jets will be, but probably more importantly, they have been carefully checked to ensure that they remain clear of noise-sensitive areas and obstructions, like power lines.
I notice in an earlier reply you tried putting on your schoolmaster’s cap in gently chiding one respondent for not understanding risk assessment, going on to use ETOPS operations as an example that the respondent, as a professional pilot, was doing “without understanding” that he was taking risks that had been deemed aceptable.
Bemused is the word that comes to mind – yet again – when I see someone with your background comparing ETOPS with (what you see as) the ‘acceptable’ risk of allowing a light aircraft to transit a takeoff splay – because (as you see it), the chances of a twin suffering an engine failure and being at exactly the same level at exactly the same time as what I'll call 'the intruder' are so low that it should be acceptable for you to proceed into the area unimpeded. Simply put, that just ain’t the way Aviation is conducted – and rightly so.
Call it Sod’s Law, call it Dr James Reason’s Swiss Cheese model – call it what you like - but these procedures have been put in place so that crews – both civilian and military – don’t have to rely on that proverbial ‘last slice of cheese’ as the ONLY factor between them and disaster. What you’re suggesting is basically that - removing all safety constraints and relying on ‘the last slice of cheese’ – that the two aircraft will not be in exactly the same piece of airspace at exactly the same time. Sod’s Law says that one day they will – and you never know, it might just be you who is in one of the conflicting aircraft that day.