Gonzo,
Haha - so nice to read, but you are writing about a different thing in my opinion - Procedural App - you can never see the planes, only comms from pilots - now with radar we add an ability to see the planes on a screen whilst still having the comms - so we added a functionality for increased safety. We didn't just rely on what the pilots reported.
Remote tower - we replace the eyes of the ATCO on site who can see the planes - and put a camera in its place. Some possible additions like thermal imaging are potentially an added advantage, I admit, but the main purpose of the project is to do the same job as the ATCO's eyes and feed that data to a remote location. The overall aim is reduce the costs - it is all about efficiency these days, by reducing the number of staff.
The remote tower concept is initially being rolled out at airfields where paying for an ATCO to be on duty for many hours of the day, when there are no operations, is not stated as being cost effective. Unfortunately there are many trained ATCOs in Europe at present, without a job (e.g. Spain). Maybe reduced salaries at these airports could have been an answer? These days "any job is better than no job" for a lot of Europeans. This would support these smaller airports and regions. Technology doesn't spend money at restaurants, shops and put money back into these rural communities, employed people do.
I would actually be interested to see the business case for the Remote Towers......I wonder what the time-scale is for it to become cheaper than a human? Maybe all ATCOs just become ATSEPs and keep the technology running instead??
I personally don't think the Remote Tower increases safety compared to the service provided by an ATCO in the tower itself.
If you want to start an interesting debate about the future of ATC - Is Point Merge the start of an automated approach sequence, so that a computer will do it in the future - no need for the ATCO to do the final approach sequencing? Link this with CPDLC - ultimately will there be no need for RTF any more?
My personal opinion, unfortunately the future is not bright at the moment for our profession.
