  High-frequency wave propagation in near-inertial wave shear has been
considered fundamental in setting the spectral character of the oceanic
internal wave continuum and for transporting energy to wave-breaking. We
compare idealized ray tracing numerical results with metrics derived using a
wave turbulence derivation for the kinetic equation and a path integral to
study such scale-separated interactions. At small inertial wave amplitudes, all
three provide consistent descriptions for the mean drift of wavepackets in the
spectral domain and dispersion about that mean drift. Extrapolating our results
to the background internal wavefield over-predicts downscale energy transports
by an order of magnitude. At oceanic amplitudes, however, the numerics support
diminished transport and dispersion that coincide with the mean drift time
scale becoming similar to the lagged correlation time scale. Despite this
decrease, numerical estimates of downscale energy transfer are still
significantly larger than oceanic derived metrics. Our results support
replacing the long standing interpretive paradigm of extreme scale-separated
interactions with a more nuanced slate of 'local' interactions in the kinetic
equation.
