Folks,
Is this amazing --- or what!!
Not really, just depressingly predictable. Remember MLS, remember the home grown radar (before TAAAAATS --- aka Eurocat) that could track trucks on the Geelong Rd., but lost a 747 in the holding patterns around Melbourne.
The fact remains that a successor to ILS is needed, and a successor that gets down to Cat 111C (LAAS), and at least Cat.1 (WAAS) for the Regionals and the mining provinces. Cat 111C (eventually) will be quite possible with the LAAS version of WAAS, which is much like GRAS, except that it is a public signal, not subscription only.
WAAS??? A little bird says that WAAS is dead, because a LAAS will cover 97% of the travelling public, ie: The heavily trafficked east coast routes, and other inter-capitals arrival routes.
A WAAS deal would be available with Japan (ever given thought to why they think they need it??) --- but how would Airservice charge for it ??? They can't.
This may be so, but it only covers maybe 10% of the aircraft (not aircraft movements). If this same logic was applied to, say, roads, we would probably have no sealed roads west of the Blue Mountains – given the % of the population living in and around the big coastal cities, probably 97% of cars and trucks are in these areas.
In short, the approach to WAAS is: Sod Rural and Regional and Remote Australia for modern technology, they get by only with mostly inferior communications generally, (hi-speed broadband, what broadband ?- notwithstanding "election promises"), so why should Rural, Regional and Remote Australia expect to get access to (in national terms) cheap precision approach aids??
Sadly, the "we can do it better" brigade at Airservices, it seems to me, were probably aided and abetted by the Airservices disinterest in anything for which they can't send you a bill, and WAAS (unlike Galileo) has no provision for "subscription only" precision signals.
Perhaps we ( or the Minister, or the Treasurer, in these straightened times) should ask Dick Smith's new best friend, Mike Taylor, he's the head of the "Department", under which all this has transpired.
Tootle pip!!