A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/770043
Our current timetable is to have CLT operational by the late spring, 2017, with IOC in the early fall to coincide with ATD - 2. SWIM Visualization Tool (SVT) PHL declared IOC in mid December and have been using the system r egularly ever since. There is another surface viewer prototype, developed by MITRE and in use at the Command Center , known as NA S Operational Dashboard (NOD). We are attempting to set up an operational demonstration of this equipment to ensure that we ar e able to captu re its capabilities with TFDM. Since this was done out of house, I have concerns tha t TFDM will not meet some of it s capabilities. NEXTGEN Kevin McLaughlin (SCT) is the National Ne xtGen Representative for NATCA. His report to the membership is below. Future of Radar Surveillance On Nov . 2, 2015 H.R. 1314 became Public Law 114 - 75 Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015. Among the numerous sections of this Act is Title X Spectrum Pipeline. Title X contains provisions facilitating the transfer from gov ernment use and control to industry significant swaths of the electronic real est ate known The Radio Spectrum. Specifically, according to Title X, the Secretary of Commerce shall submit to the President and the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) a repo rt identifying 30 megahertz of spectrum below the frequency of 3 gigahertz for reallocation to non - Federal use and not later than 2024 begin a process to initiate competitive bidding for licenses to this spectrum. Ok so what? The impact of this legislatio n is the creation of a four - Agency consortium (FAA, DoD, DHS, and NOAA) with the objective of vacating the 1300 - 1350 MHz spectrums by consolidating long - range surveillance, short - range surveillance, and weathe r radar spectrum requirements. These activities will be funded through the Spectrum Reallocation Fund (SRF), via the SENSR (Spectrum Efficient National Surveillance Radar program) pipeline once approved by a Technical Panel staffed by FCC, Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and National Telecommuni cation and Infor mation Administration (NTIA). The first public DOT/FAA action on this initiative was a Request for Information (RFI) th at closed on October 18, 2016. An RFI is essentially a marketplace survey to assess the level of interest and capability among potential qualified vendors, and obtain industry input to assist the FAA in finali zing its acquisition strategy. The likely vehicle for the consolidation of government spectrum needs is the use of Multifunction Phased Array Radar (MPAR) . MPAR could p otentially absorb and fulfill the operational requirements currently provided by CARSR, ASR4, ASR8, ASR9, ASR11, GPN81, and NEXRAD. The OMB Director has earmarked $ 500M to undertake the research, development, and planning necessary to facilitate this trans formation. Obviously the cost for replacing all these sites will be enormous and we all have watched how funding, or lack of it, affects tech innovation and implementat ion in our sector of aviation. The driver of this program is that a recent auction of s imilar frequency real estate yielded approximately $ 42.4 billion . That source of revenue will be an extremely attractive target, especially to the incoming business - orientated administration.