Dick,
Another one of your I understand/I believe comments with nothing to actually back it up.
By the way, I understand the ruling in relation to transponders not being used as a safety mitigator came because a group of Air Traffic Controllers at an ICAO meeting were concerned in the early days that ACAS may replace Air Traffic Control. They naturally made their decision to preserve their jobs. Who wouldn’t?
Where is your reference?
Do you seriously believe that actual ATCs turn up at these meetings? When you were in charge of the CAA how many WORKFACE ATCs were involved in your decision making processes? How many managers (the ones you were really talking to) would care if workforce numbers were cut. I would think that in Management 101 they teach get the least number of workers doing the most amount of work.
This may be the reason there is a worldwide shortage of ATCs. Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) and their organisation (CANSO) hope that the next 'latest piece of technology' will be the panacea to all their lack of recruiting.
Just maybe this ICAO decision you talk of was made on safety grounds. If you seriously think that ICAO decisions are made on such flimsy grounds how can you support ICAO Airspace Classifications?
Dick, you rabbit on about posting under ones own name and controllers only being interested in preserving their jobs. Yet on the Benalla thread you wanted controllers in Australia to provide a LSALT and Instrument Approach monitoring service under radar coverage. Do you still support this idea? We have less than 8% of the controllers they have in the States and vastly less surveillance coverage, yet you want us to provide a US style service. When will it sink in that you must compare apples with apples.