The following are key excerpts from the 1987 FAA National Airspace System Plan.
The FAA National Airspace System Plan was first release in December of 1981.
The national Airspace System, including the procedures and equipment, which comprise it, has evolved over the past 50 years. Prior to the 1980's, improvements in technology or innovations in procedures were implemented in a manner that principally remedied localized operational problems that already had or were expected to occur. System evolution involved a series of piecemeal adjustments and improvements. This evolution produced a mixture of equipment of varying technological generations and types. As a result, the system of 1980 was expensive to operate and maintain, expansion capability was limited, and adaptability to changing requirements was difficult.
What had been missing was a plan for evolution designed to implement national Airspace System improvements, which met stated goals and objectives. The National Airspace System Plan for Facilities, Equipment and Associated Development, first issued in 1981 and revised annually per congressional request, satisfied the need to define the orderly and rational evolution of the system as a whole.
By 1981 the FAA had completed NAS Stage A and there was an emerging ATC industrial base serving the FAA. There were multiple R&D programs showing significant progress and it was time to start rolling out the next generation ATC system. Everyone was very high technology literate, systems driven, and they clearly understood the movement from Fundamental Research to Applied Research to Preproduction Prototypes to Production Prototypes and finally to Full Scale Production and Operations. The challenge was how to move from the R&D labs at NAFEC, MITRE, and different companies like Sanders, Burroughs, Univac, DEC, Hughes, and others.
By 1981 it was also clear that the current system had gone through several evolution phases and it included many different equipment types and generations performing similar functions. The term that was used for the existing system was - "The House That Jack Built". This basically captured the idea that whatever Jack felt like doing to the house at any instant in time it was done. The result was clearly stated as a Rube Goldberg Contraption. This led to inefficiencies in maintenance and system upgrades; it was getting more difficult to implement upgrades. The thought that surfaced for the future system was to use common equipment for similar functions. Commonality became a key element for movement into Full Scale Production; common computers, common displays, common software, etc.
Given the rich FAA R&D base circa 1980 and the desire to develop an elegant fully integrated system, the FAA National Airspace System Plan surfaced. What no one anticipated at the time is the shifting Government priorities to decrease funding in all areas except for Defense. What was also not anticipated was that the Defense needs had changed and all of the previous Defense funding that overlapped civilian air traffic control was gone. The FAA with its struggling industrial base was left on its own to implement the NAS Plan. This meant that the NAS Plan conceived in a different time by a different people had a fatal flaw.
The NAS Plan fatal flaw was that it rolled up all the small programs associated with the air traffic command and control systems into one very large program called the Advanced Automation System (AAS). Unfortunately the FAA failed to realize that this was a single point of failure. This is truely tragic because they clearly understood the concept of single points of failure.
As part of the AAS design competition phase the industrial base serving the FAA command and control systems was divided into 2 camps.
The production contract went to IBM. IBM failed to deliver AAS.
So what happened?
The FAA decided not to fund the innovators that could bring about the AAS production system. Instead they funded the status quo and all they could do is produce what they were familiar with producing. A different scenario could have unfolded if the Hughes team were permitted to work with IBM to bring about the system vision which in hindsight was very reasonable. It was the next logical step in ATC evolution. IBM and the FAA with its blind faith in IBM and ignorance of what was happening to the industrial base just failed to execute the program. In all fairness they were under constant attack as part of the privatization efforts associated with the new Government that emerged in 1980.
What now?
Now the FAA is embarked on NextGen. All the development is incremental and based on the previous century ATC concepts of ground based ATC. This is in contrast to cockpit based ATC envisioned by some in the 1980's for this century.
Hughes eventually became a property of Raytheon and the remnants of the Hughes system form the early 80's is part of the current STARS program. Raytheon did not get the Hughes Aircraft that was a technology company because it was split into 3 pieces that fragmented the heart of its technology capabilities. Space and Communications went to Boeing, Hughes Research went to multiple entities, Ground Systems Group went to Raytheon. Other parts went to Lockheed. Hughes Ground Systems group developed the air defense systems for NATO, Pacific Rim, and JSS in the USA. It was known for systems engineering and converting software development into a science and engineering discipline during the Combat Grande program.
So the FAA appears to have captured what is left of its consolidated industrial base and they are all working on NextGen (Raytheon, Liedos, Harris). They are using a very low risk approach of incremental development. The system will eventually become kludgy (another term for the 80's) but it does not matter. The key issue is that technology is continuing to move on and it is unclear what will happen with the current ground based system concept in the next 20 years.
IBM Federal Systems group => Lockheed Martin => Liedos (previously SAIC) - ERAM
Hughes => General Motors => E-Systems , Lockheed Martin, Boeing => L-3 Communications=> Raytheon - STARS
Sanders => Lockheed Martin - out of FAA
Burroughs / Univac / Texas Instruments => Unisys - out of FAA
DEC / Tandem / August Systems / SEL / SUN / other computer vendors - out of FAA