You partly commented on the problem, in that the 'mids' forces didn't have a dedicated control room - so one could argue, who is the dedicated key holder for safety throughout the launch, transit, prosecution and recovery process, in that instance?
I don't really see a problem in the flight following department and I would need to ask if that really is a reason in itself for an NPAS Control Room (NPASCR).
The NPASCR, as I understand, will be there to allocate aircraft to tasks in the most efficient way based on ac availability and positioning. Alfie15 sums up quite nicely a system already in place, similar to other parts of the country, that works very well.
The mention of flight following in the
Kent proposal seems to be put in there as a filler.
30. It is a requirement of the Police Air Operations Manual that a force control room ‘flight follow’ any police aircraft operated within their force area.
31. For the purposes of NPAS this will require Kent Air Ops to take responsibility for flight following ALL aircraft, regardless of the force are in which they are operating.
As I read para 30, all that the PAOM requires is that
'a' force control room flight follows, not necessarily Kent as
'the control room'. para 31 seems to ride roughshod over para 30 to give the proposal a bit more woomph!
As far as flight following goes in the Mids region there are specific procedures in place to monitor the launch and recovery flight phases especially for those based 'in the sticks'. As for the other phases, in this region we have available;
24 hour ATCU's - Birmingham, East Midlands, Brize Norton, Luton, Robin Hood, Manchester, London Information/Military.
Non 24 hour (stc) - Coventry, Wittering, Waddington, Cranwell, Scampton, Halfpenny Green, Husbands Bosworth, Shobdon, Wellsbourne, Gloucester, Oxford, Cosford, Shawbury, Nottingham, Leicester, Gamston etc, etc.
Non ATC net - 'common/hailing' frequency, FCR requesting air support, Local controllers, operating unit.
As we can see, there are plenty of 'flight followers' around to use and IMHO it would be safer, as in para 30, that the FCR requesting air support
flight follow.
For Kent to take on the potential flight following responsibility of all the nations air support at the same time raises one simple question.... on which radio will they flight follow each of NPAS's 24 aircraft ?