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The following links are to various systems analysis areas associated with the FAA and Air Traffic Control (ATC). The most mature analsyis is associated with:
The current state of US Air Travel is not good. Everyone knows this yet nothing is happening to correct the situation. The decline in US Air Travel has taken decades but now we have reached a point where the system is in serious trouble. This report takes a systems perspective and reports on the condition of the US Air Travel Transportation System, how we may have arrived at this point and then offers potential suggestions for moving forward in a positive direction.
The FAA predecessor was conceived and established as part of the Air Commerce Act of 1926. It was about commerce. World War II resulted in massive new technologies and it was in 1958 that the FAA was formed. Its role remained true to the original goals set out in the Air Commerce Act of 1926 but it was further acknowledged that it needed to consume the new technologies of RADAR and communications. There was a cross road that we faced in the early 60's - would the FAA use the new air defense system Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) or would it move in an independent direction. The decision was to move in its own independent civilian direction with the establishment of Project Beacon by President Kennedy. By the mid 60's President Johnson realized that the FAA needed to be part of an integrated transportation system and so it was made part of the Department of Transportation. The goal of commerce had been achieved and now it was about the entire transportation system. In the 1960's the FAA was also given the challenge of developing the Super Sonic Transport, a clear departure from relying on military aircraft for future civilian transportation. Unfortunately the SST program was canceled and the FAA lost future aircraft development charters.
Appropriations for FAA and its Predecessor Agencies Fiscal Years 1926-1997, budgets to 2016, FAA privatization, and other related information.
In 2019 the administration in Washington DC was proposing to privatize the FAA. This is a decades long battle that was coming to a head.
Key excerpts from the 1987 FAA National Airspace System Plan.
Advanced Automation System (AAS)
NAS Plan from 1989 - AAS program description.
Automated Enroute Air Traffic Control (AERA)
NAS Plan from 1989 - AERA program description. After decades of delay by politics and other obstacles, by 2018 the AERA program was finally starting to become reality within the STARS program for the terminal systems. Operational testing and evaluation started.
Semi Automatic Ground System (SAGE)
SAGE was the most ambitious computer project ever undertaken, as it required over 800 programmers and the technical resources of some of USA's largest corporations—IBM (hardware), Burroughs (inter-Center communications), MIT's Lincoln Laboratories (system integration), Western Electric (design and construction of buildings) and SDC (part of the RAND Corporation) for software. The total project cost is estimated to have been between 8 and 12 billion dollars. The SAGE system remained in continuous operation until 1983, over 20 years.
Hughes Aircraft . Hughes Aircraft GSG
The credits to Hughes Aircraft include satellites, space probes, remote robotics, massive command and control systems, computing, sensors, neural networks, the first application of engineering to software development, systems practices, systems engineering. television projection displays, LCD displays, satellite based consumer television, electronics impervious to radiation (space environment), gigahurtz chips for communications and computing, fiberoptics, and the list goes on. Many attempt to imprint todays rich with the massive accomplishments of Howard Hughes and Hughes Aircraft. They have nothing in common with Howard Hughes. Howard applied his initial wealth to satisfy the needs of the time and the needs that he addressed were challenges that no one would touch with a ten foot pole. The result was massive breakthrough applied research in every area that transformed our world.
Distributed Communications - Paul Baron
Paul Baran graduated from Drexel University in 1949 (then called Drexel Institute of Technology), with a degree in electrical engineering. Paul worked for Hughes Aircraft Company's systems group before joining RAND in 1959. While working at RAND, Paul matured his early ideas on computer failures and redundancy and conceived of the Internet and digital packet switching, the Internet's underlying data communications technology. His concepts are still employed today; just the terms are different. His seminal work first appeared in a series of RAND studies published between 1960 and 1962 and then finally in the tome "On Distributed Communications," published in 1964.
One of the recommendations of a presidential task force, established in 1961, called for the application of computer technology to the air traffic control system. The FAA's automation efforts have been in two broad, but related, areas--the enroute system and the terminal system.
In 1961, President Kennedy asked for a long-range plan to ensure safe and efficient control of all air traffic within the United States. A taskforce was established by the Administrator of the FAA to prepare this plan. The task force report, under the name "Project Beacon," submitted an analysis of the existing methods of air traffic control, recommended a number of near term improvements, and presented an advanced concept for an air traffic control system to meet future needs.
Undeveloped Content CRT-Implosion . DEC . Economic-Impact . ETABS . mem . NAFEC . NAS Stage-A . Raytheon . SE2025 . Specs . track-symbology .