Crab; Quote: "if you call flyaway with lots of tarmac ahead of you, the sensible thing would be to land..."
I questioned this very issue when I flew with the RN. It's this sort of ambiguity and lack of defintion that I am trying to avoid.
Well with military flight profiles you may well have to accept some ambiguities - if you want your calls to be absolutely the intentions of the pilot based on RFM figures then you will end up with PC1 and 2 profiles which may not be suited to mil ops. If you want a pilot to make a decision based on probable aircraft performance but allow him to then make captaincy decisions based on the mission then calls such as flyaway are more suited.
Remember that PC1 and 2 (cat A and B) are all about not being sued if you crash with passengers aboard because the RFM guarantees that following the manufacturer's figures permits either safe landing or continued flight.
In mil flying, as you are aware, more flexibility is often required and a better awareness of what the aircraft will actually do - based on experience and training - offers a pilot flexibility of thought and action.
An example is of how much nose down to use to get to SSE - many RFM give worse-case examples in the region of 20 degrees nose down; that may be guaranteed to work in every case if you are above the specified height but in a lower level environment may be excessive and well beyond what is actually needed to get the aircraft safe.