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Updated The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) air traffic control (ATC) systems are perilously out of date, nonetheless don’t request replacements anytime soon, says the US Govt Accountability Office (GAO).
In a document released Monday, the GAO said that 51 of the FAA’s 138 ATC systems – more than a third – have been unsustainable on account of a lack of parts, shortfalls in funding to sustain them, or a lack of technology refresh funding to replace them. A additional 54 systems have been described as “potentially unsustainable” for similar reasons, with the added caveat that tech refresh funding was available to them.
“FAA has 64 ongoing investments aimed at modernizing 90 of the 105 unsustainable and potentially unsustainable systems,” the GAO said in its document. “However, the agency has been slow to modernize the most critical and at-risk systems.”
The document said the seemingly uncertain status of 17 systems was “especially concerning” as these are deemed to have critical operational impact at the same time as being unsustainable and having prolonged completion dates – the primary of them acquired’t be modernized unless 2030 at the earliest. Others aren’t planned to be whole unless 2035, and four of the 17 “most critical and at-risk FAA ATC systems” have no modernization plans at all.
A listing of 17 critical at-threat FAA ATC systems – click to enlarge
Of the systems on the listing, two are more than 40 years venerable, and a additional seven have been in provider for more than 30 years.
FAA no longer A-OK
Yesterday’s GAO document was written according to the grounding of all US departures in January 2023 after the FAA’s Look to Air Missions (NOTAM) machine went offline because any person accidentally deleted some critical files.
Whereas that may possibly have been individual error, it was the GAO’s opportunity to again assess the FAA’s ATC modernization efforts, which it says have been dismally at the back of and poorly managed for decades.
“For over four decades we have reported on challenges facing FAA’s modernization of its air traffic control systems,” the GAO said. “In February 1982, FAA released its first comprehensive plan for improving air traffic control services. As we subsequently reported in several products, FAA faced challenges with this modernization.”
Briefly, this is never always really a unique situation for the FAA – it even admitted to needing unless the 2030s to modernize the NOTAM machine after the 2023 outage.
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As for the cause of those delays, the FAA lacks organization with regards to tracking such initiatives, especially the unique ones.
According to the document, the FAA’s policies don’t require great oversight of initiatives that have yet to unique a baseline for payment, time table, and performance. That’s resulted in initiatives taking an average of more than four years to establish baselines, meaning nothing concrete is getting achieved within the meantime.
In addition – and perhaps most critically – the FAA’s Joint Resources Council, the physique that oversees investments and initiatives, hasn’t been guaranteeing that ATC initiatives “deliver functionality in manageable segments,” hasn’t constantly monitored high-threat items in its various initiatives, and has been sloppy in next-phase approval of initiatives, reviewing simplest “some, but not all, required documentation prior to approving.”
Briefly, the GAO said the FAA’s reliance on unsustainable systems is introducing a ton of threat to aviation safety, and downhearted narrative keeping has meant that Congress would no longer have the understanding it desires to successfully oversee its ATC modernization efforts.
The GAO wants the FAA to place into effect seven recommendations, largely centered on decreasing baseline time, increasing oversight, and guaranteeing Congress is fully advised of how the FAA is mitigating dangers to ATC systems. The FAA generally concurred with the GAO’s findings, save one item that it partially concurred with pending language changes.
Kevin Walsh, the GAO’s director of IT and cybersecurity and an author on the document, advised The Register that he thinks the recommendations are reasonable and “achievable with some good faith effort” on the FAA’s part.
“[The FAA] also indicated plans to address some of the recommendations,” Walsh added. “We [see] the agreement and early plans as good signs.”
We asked the FAA and elected officials liable for oversight to comment. ®
Updated to add at 2100 UTC
The FAA has been in contact with its aspect of this story, which is largely that it sees respect to respect with the auditors. In a statement, the agency said it desires $8 billion to modernize its systems:
We’re also advised that in his testimony to the US Home Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on Tuesday, FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker said: “The FAA facilities have been somewhat famously underinvested in over the years. We have 21 Facilities that control high altitude aircraft, those have been designed to be a maximum existence at 50 years. They’re now on average between 60 and 70 years venerable.
“All these facilities have to be replaced and upgraded. It’s far a fairly heavy seize financially. We have requested $8 billion in next year’s budget to start up working on some of that replacement.
“There’s a titanic backlog of sustainment and modernization and legal now 90 p.c of our budget for facilities goes on sustainment rather than unique systems, so we have a lot of labor to bring the machine as a lot as bustle.”
