Onceapilot, I agree with that view!
When I first started AAR, it was standard procedure for the 'operating pilot' to fly the tanker, talk to the receivers and to ATC/SOC all on the same radio frequency. That was fine, because AAR slots were generally 30 min and we rarely had more than a 4-ship in the slot.
As time went by, someone decided that AAR slots could be reduced to 20 min. That meant that the chance of receivers leaving with others joining and some still refuelling increased. Those of us with experience could still cope with all the radio chat, but it was harder for newcomers to learn the art than it had been for us 10 years earlier.
So the idea of a discrete 'boom' frequency was proposed - I wrote some SOPs which went to Staneval, but they never got round to putting them into effect. The idea was to operate as on a trail - pilot-flying dealt with the receivers on the 'boom' frequency and pilot-not-flying dealt with ATC/SOC. Inbound receivers would only be accepted when the pilot-flying was happy; all the RV call etc. would take place on the ATC/SOC frequency and the receivers would only be pushed to the boom frequency when they'd called 'visual'. Clearance to join the formation would only be given by the pilot-flying; he/she would also be the ONLY person responsible for moving receivers around the tanker and clearing them for contact/disconnect etc.
Another nation decided that they wanted the PF to use the ATC/SOC frequency, with the PNF controlling receiver movement on the boom frequency. I advised against this, but they insisted. Then they devolved receiver movement to their air refuelling officers once the receivers had reached echelon, or the 'observation' position as it became. They coped with this ONLY because their air refuelling officers were experienced fast-jet backseaters who were very familiar with formation control and had bags of spare capacity. But I still recommended that only the pilot at the controls should move receivers around the formation - I once witnessed a PF turning the aircraft just as a Tornado had been cleared for contact by the air refuelling officer, much to the Tornado crew's surprise. I explained in the debrief that this was
precisely why only one pilot should fly the formation. But it's their train set and they cope fine due to the well above average quality of their air refuelling officers - whereas my proposed SOPs were for 3 'average' crew members!
We offered the RAF an opportunity to come and play with the full mission AAR desktop trainer to evaluate SOPs - but there was no money in the budget for such a thing....
OAP, there's a fair bit in that report about datalink issues etc. But the SOP shouldn't require such things and, as they used to be, should be simple enough to work with the basic principles which the RAF AAR force developed through long experience.