It’s easier to work on something when it stands still for you. America’s air traffic system is a prime example.
While thousands of passenger planes remain pandemically parked, the Federal Aviation Administration and its contractors should use that slowdown to focus on preparing a robust future that will increase the capacity, convenience, and safety of air travel. How? By upgrading the infrastructure of our National Airspace System (soon to stretch to aerospace). That upgrade also would help the FAA to handle the explosive growth of flying drones.
The millions who watched hundreds of drones soar in star-spangled formation at Super Bowls can appreciate what integrated coordination could do for all of flying. When we return to pre-COVID-19 levels, we again will have 26,000 daily passenger flights, and we don’t want the same delays which frustrated those passengers.
The fundamental requirement is communication — a virtually instantaneous ability to exchange a constant stream of information and commands. We consider it instantaneous when we speak person-to-person, or by phone, or interact with the internet. But machines don’t pause for breath and are never slow talkers. Their back-and-forth exchanges may be every nanosecond (a billionth of a second) or picosecond (a trillionth). Coordination like that can untangle the worst traffic jams both on the ground and in the air.
For air travel, once the communication network exists, then the FAA’s NextGen system (and successors) can fulfill their potential.
NextGen is the aviation equivalent to the “Internet of Things” that links our home internet, appliances, lights, phones, cable, heat and air, entertainment, and more so that we can control them by voice or with a smartphone dashboard. Then whatever comes next can be added easily as another component of a fully interconnected network.
Air traffic control will be like that. It can interactively use satellite-based GPS to control the flow instead of clunky ground-based radars, thus adding constant precise and instant data on aircraft location, speed and direction, weather conditions, spacing between planes, etc. That can untangle the delays, clutter, and inefficiencies of air travel.
But just like a smart home must start with high-speed internet access, the future of air travel requires a new communication network that is being prepared, called the FAA Enterprise Network Service, dependent however on proper priority and funding from Congress. The Enterprise Network Service is in the acquisition-planning phase, meaning it needs funding from Congress to nourish it. It would replace the outmoded FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure that has been in place since 2002, which will be like replacing rotary-dial phones with optic fiber and wi-fi.
Like all legacy systems, the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure is expensive to maintain, costing over $3 billion a year (according to inspector general findings), and is riddled with technological failures that cost time as well as money. It lacks the broad capabilities of modern data systems. FTI outages have knocked out air traffic control and caused hundreds of flights to be grounded, frustrating passengers and spoiling business and personal plans.
Try adding hundreds of thousands of drones to the system, and the Enterprise Network Service becomes even more important. It provides a strong new backbone not only to control passenger traffic, but also to integrate this with new unmanned aerial vehicles, drone delivery systems, potentially air taxis, and the budding private sector of satellites and space travel.
We never want mid-air disasters, no matter what air vehicles are colliding. The massive addition of drones will overwhelm existing capability, requiring the advanced Enterprise Network Service network.
The emergence of artificial intelligence and autonomous-guidance vehicles requires a robust modern communication system to interface with us mere humans. And it must include solid cybersecurity against rogue actors, whether foreign, criminal, or simply mischievous hackers.
The Enterprise Network Service is intended as the spine to satisfy these vast capabilities, which are well within the proven expertise of America’s information and technology industry. But the key is strong congressional support to fund and prioritize its development. Because it is in development, the structure of the Enterprise Network Service is not fully clear, but the necessity is.
As parked aircraft return to the skies and frequent flying resumes, we will need a more modern and capable system to coordinate our re-crowded skies. The FAA Enterprise Network Service will be the key to making air travel safer and smoother.
Former Rep. Ernest Istook chaired the Transportation Subcommittee on the House Appropriations Committee.
