Oh well I guess if you need to know a bit about PBN you can always go to the flying club at Benson, they have an aircraft that has the full RNAV equipment including P-RNAV and LPV approaches.

Where’s the ‘like’ button?

A an ex-military man who now plies his trade in controlled airspace, I would really appreciate you chaps being part of the integrated, layered safety system rather than finding yourselves having to constantly play the military/state joker.

I expect a lot of states will mirror the actions of the French, In the past the French state has paid the bills for calibration and operation of ILS systems at all the regional airports but this support has now ended. To replace these approaches the french govenment has introduced GNSS LPV approaches to replace the ILS. Some airports have kept the ILS at their own expense but others now only offer a GNSS precision approach with an NDB/DME as the last line of defence aganst GPS outage.

One only has to look just across the Channel to see the new order LeTouquet has now got GNSS LPV on both runways and maintains the ILS on one of these runways while Calais has withdrawn the ILS in favour of a GNSS LPV.

In the foreseeable future I can see only CAT2/3 runways having ILS with all CAT 1 runways going to GNSS, If the RAF wishes to maintain an airforce that has any credibility it will have to adapt to the changing aviation environment.

The principal users of civil airports & GAT airspace are the ME fleet & the more modern types are RNAV compliant & more than capable of RNAV approaches. Crews are therefore trained to fly them.

Some of the legacy types might have an issue but they could be modernised or more likely got rid of in the next SDSR if it’s deemed to be too much trouble!

GAT is routinely used by FJs on ops; I’ve many hours up and down the Gulf working Bahrain, Kuwait etc out of the ‘Deid on Op TELIC. And it’s GAT for all players out of Akrotiri at the moment as well. It’s very often easier than OAT when overseas.

FJs don’t often land at civil airports but often hold them as diversions, so they will need to keep pace with these changes somehow. Especially at home, where the MOD seems bent on reducing the number of military airfields available for diversion.

A fly in the RNP ointment is jamming of GPS and DME transponder frequencies; military aircraft don’t have the easy civil get-out of not operating under such conditions. Alternatives will need to exist and will take up the precious avionic space that might otherwise be given over to triple-redundant IRUs with independent GPS. Copying the civil world doesn’t answer all our problems, I’m afraid, and military get-out clauses exist for that precise reason.

Quite a lot of work being done on Mil compliance with PBN, around the area of equivalence.

I didn't think you could nominate a destination alternate based solely on an RNAV procedure? You need a conventional approach in order to nominate an airfield as a diversion, although you may still do an RNAV procedure once you get there.

Or I may have that completely wrong. It’s not unknown.

you shouldnt plan on GNSS at both primary and diversion in case of a non redundant system fault in the space segment, i believe. Certainly if you have FDE capability.

I had a mate flying the Voyager a couple of years ago. Although Cat III build out of the factory they were only Cat I in RAF service and no RNAV SIDS/STARS or GNSS approaches flown.