Good and bad of ATC Privatization

WannFly

WannFly

Final Approach
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Priyo
thoughts? experiences ?Think Canada has this rt?

PS: lets not make this a political thread or how capitalism wins/ruins...bla bla bla

as a aircraft owner, all i care about is if i will get a bill when i talk to ATC
 
Until the administration lays out a plan that specifically addresses 1) how much this will cost in user fees and 2) exactly what benefits it will have over the FAA, I can't see going private.

Vague statements on how it will cost less, be more efficient and have more advanced technology mean nothing. Give me specifics on how they will achieve this.
 
There are so many possible ways to privatize its hard to say. Handle it like FSS (government contract to a private company to provide the service with specific performance parameters on the contract) and it's seemed pretty good to me. I realize you don't get the local weather knowledge that you used to, but that was already going away (due to station consolidation) before the privatization. They (LockMart/Leidos)have updated the systems used and make more services available online (directly from FSS) than before.

Fund it via user fees (whether it's privatized or not) and safety will go down simply because pilots (see "Why are pilots cheapskates" thread) will not use it when maybe they should.

I've seen many folks equate privatizing with user fees and those two things are independent variables. You could privatize without user fees and you can impose user fees without privatizing. They are not equal!

John
 
jsstevens said:
Fund it via user fees (whether it's privatized or not) and safety will go down simply because pilots (see "Why are pilots cheapskates" thread) will not use it when maybe they should.

John
Click to expand...
This is what i am worried about.
 
jsstevens said:
There are so many possible ways to privatize its hard to say. Handle it like FSS (government contract to a private company to provide the service with specific performance parameters on the contract) and it's seemed pretty good to me. I realize you don't get the local weather knowledge that you used to, but that was already going away (due to station consolidation) before the privatization. They (LockMart/Leidos)have updated the systems used and make more services available online (directly from FSS) than before.

Fund it via user fees (whether it's privatized or not) and safety will go down simply because pilots (see "Why are pilots cheapskates" thread) will not use it when maybe they should.

I've seen many folks equate privatizing with user fees and those two things are independent variables. You could privatize without user fees and you can impose user fees without privatizing. They are not equal!
Click to expand...

These are good points, John. I'm 100% against user fees for the cheap pilots issue. End of story. We pay our taxes on the fuel already. User fees will just discourage use of ATC.

Privatization I think depends on how it's done. Using your example of LockMart, I've got some significant issues regarding availability and speed of service. Now, I have no idea how FSS was before Lockmart, so I have no basis of comparison.

With a few exceptions, I've not had issues with ATC in the current system. Sure, the technology can be improved, but there are already some good improvements being slated. My biggest concern is GA planes losing access to airspace and services.

So, I suppose I would be willing to consider privatization, but not user fees.
 
What I don't understand is why privatize? If the system is plagued with problems, (which I don't think it is) fix it, don't just hand it off to some private company.

Privatizing government services that are designed to maintain public safety is a dangerous road, in my opinion.
 
I think the biggest problem with the existing system is that the hardware they depend on is getting nearly impossible to fix. And the FAA has not been able to upgrade it. IBM won a contract to do so and failed (and I'm not necessarily blaming IBM, I wasn't on the inside and there are so MANY reasons government contracts can go sideways that have nothing to do with the contractor).

NextGen was/is supposed to make the spacing tighter safely, and to make the ascent/descent smooth all improving capacity. And it would/will if they can get the hardware and software in place to support it. I think the idea behind privatizing it as a service contract allows the contractor to upgrade the systems as they see fit as long as they meet the service standards. This removes the government red tape involved in upgrading systems. It might even be set up as an incentive fee based contract so they make more money of they improve services based on a predefined set of measurements.

This could be a good idea as long as user fees stay out of it. But that's a long shot. And unfortunately playing the safety card is more likely (in my opinion given today's social and political climate) to result in efforts to restrict or eliminate those "dangerous little planes".:(

John
 
As I understand it, the FAA would still have to maintain the infrastructure and only the controllers would be in the private sector. Someone correct me if that's wrong.
 
jsstevens said:
I think the biggest problem with the existing system is that the hardware they depend on is getting nearly impossible to fix. And the FAA has not been able to upgrade it. IBM won a contract to do so and failed (and I'm not necessarily blaming IBM, I wasn't on the inside and there are so MANY reasons government contracts can go sideways that have nothing to do with the contractor).

NextGen was/is supposed to make the spacing tighter safely, and to make the ascent/descent smooth all improving capacity. And it would/will if they can get the hardware and software in place to support it. I think the idea behind privatizing it as a service contract allows the contractor to upgrade the systems as they see fit as long as they meet the service standards. This removes the government red tape involved in upgrading systems. It might even be set up as an incentive fee based contract so they make more money of they improve services based on a predefined set of measurements.

This could be a good idea as long as user fees stay out of it. But that's a long shot. And unfortunately playing the safety card is more likely (in my opinion given today's social and political climate) to result in efforts to restrict or eliminate those "dangerous little planes".:(

John
Click to expand...
Raytheon has been contracted by the FAA to upgrade the equipment at the TRACONs and Towers through the STARS program. I know this because I'm an engineer on that program. In the past 3-4 years we have already upgraded most of the biggest TRACONs including New York, Atlanta, Dallas, Boston, Northern California, and Southern California, as well as many other smaller TRACONs and all the associated Remote Towers. The ARTCCs (Center) are all Lockheed territory.
 
We can't look at FSS as an example of the positives of privatization. That's a unique situation.

With FSS, the FAA was already in the process of consolidating and upgrading tech by going automated in the early 90s. All LM did was take it to the next level. The savings over 10 years by the LM proposal was based on the FAA doing nothing to the existing system. LM took 58 facilities and reduce them to 5 and 2700 specialists to around 500. Yeah, that'll create savings in the long term but that's only because it became a service that the Internet changed and pilot's use less often.

The question is, how could a private organization reduce the number of controllers? We already have a shortage of controllers so I can't see that happening. Then, how will they eliminate facilities but yet still maintain converge of ATC service? Finally, what whizz bang tech will they implement for this so called out dated equipment we currently have? My brother works at a tower only 5 yrs old, has the newest radar displays and software (STARS). Replace it with a virtual tower that's completely void of human controllers???
 
MassPilot said:
Raytheon has been contracted by the FAA to upgrade the equipment at the TRACONs and Towers through the STARS program. I know this because I'm an engineer on that program. In the past 3-4 years we have already upgraded most of the biggest TRACONs including New York, Atlanta, Dallas, Boston, Northern California, and Southern California, as well as many other smaller TRACONs and all the associated Remote Towers. The ARTCCs (Center) are all Lockheed territory.
Click to expand...

I didn't know they'd been a follow up after the IBM mess. Good! Does this include the radars as well?
 
jsstevens said:
I didn't know they'd been a follow up after the IBM mess. Good! Does this include the radars as well?
Click to expand...
Our system does all the radar processing, but we were only recently contracted to upgrade the existing radars themselves, and none of that has been deployed yet.
 
MassPilot said:
Our system does all the radar processing, but we were only recently contracted to upgrade the existing radars themselves, and none of that has been deployed yet.
Click to expand...
I'm glad they finally got (are getting) around to it.
 
Velocity173 said:
Until the administration lays out a plan that specifically addresses 1) how much this will cost in user fees and 2) exactly what benefits it will have over the FAA, I can't see going private.

Vague statements on how it will cost less, be more efficient and have more advanced technology mean nothing. Give me specifics on how they will achieve this.
Click to expand...
They'll have to pass the law to see what's in it.
 
jsstevens said:
I'm glad they finally got (are getting) around to it.
Click to expand...
Aw come on, the current radar is fine. Nobody needs coverage anyway over the areas with frequent outages...
 
Clark1961 said:
Aw come on, the current radar is fine. Nobody needs coverage anyway over the areas with frequent outages...
Click to expand...
Privatization won't change that though. The govt will just turn the existing system over to private operator(s) and then say: it's on you guys to make it work.
 
How does the private ATC handle FAA violations by pilots? (And by controllers, for that matter.)
 
This user fee business is fine as long as it's not me that's paying the user fee. :) I agree user fees would incline GA pilots to avoid the service if it were very expensive unless it was an emergency. Then, the FAA will jump in and claim you should have used the service, violate you, and charge you for the service you didn't use.
 
jsstevens said:
They (LockMart/Leidos)have updated the systems used and make more services available online (directly from FSS) than before.
Click to expand...

But no solid evidence (that I've seen) that it has been any cheaper in the long term.


jsstevens said:
I think the biggest problem with the existing system is that the hardware they depend on is getting nearly impossible to fix. And the FAA has not been able to upgrade it. IBM won a contract to do so and failed (and I'm not necessarily blaming IBM, I wasn't on the inside and there are so MANY reasons government contracts can go sideways that have nothing to do with the contractor).
Click to expand...

This is fairly vague. When you say the gear wasn't possible to fix there's a lot of parts between a radar dish spinning around and a controller's screen. The radars are a well known entity and actually not that high tech nor hard to repair. People to DO it as a living are a little bit in short supply though. Not many people see a long term career in civilian radar maintenance being for them. Military, definitely. Lots of neat things going on there, always. ATC radar is pretty much the bottom of the heap when it comes to "interesting radar jobs".

jsstevens said:
NextGen was/is supposed to make the spacing tighter safely, and to make the ascent/descent smooth all improving capacity.
Click to expand...

No. Flat no. It was not. No technical document EVER promised that from ADS-B. The only place you'll find it is in "NextGen" marketing material. No specification EVER promised ADS-B would do any of those things OR ever be primary for ATC target data. There were numerous documents that said the radars had to remain with not even a hint of them being decommissioned.


jsstevens said:
And it would/will if they can get the hardware and software in place to support it.
Click to expand...

It will not and can not. Just the fact that it's spoofable kills that, let alone various other problems. The entire thing had to be re-designed to even fit in the time/spectrum allotted in dense traffic areas, or we wouldn't have UAT here and nowhere else.

jsstevens said:
I think the idea behind privatizing it as a service contract allows the contractor to upgrade the systems as they see fit as long as they meet the service standards. This removes the government red tape involved in upgrading systems. It might even be set up as an incentive fee based contract so they make more money of they improve services based on a predefined set of measurements.
Click to expand...

Having worked as a sub-contractor on an FAA tech contract, procurement doesn't work this way. I'd love it if it did, but no Federal agency ever will say "This company has a contract to provide our services and we won't oversee any of it. They can use whatever technology they like..." We had mountains of paperwork documenting an outdated system that we HAD better and newer gear rolling out the door to customers that did all the things the FAA system did, and much more. But it, like avionics, wasn't "certified".

We sold the FAA the ancient one. We weren't going to pay to certify the new ones, FAA via our upstream contractor was paying triple what the new ones sold for easily, and wanted us to pay to certify the new ones... LOL. Nope. Here's the old one. And our invoice.

Y'all want a new one? We'll ship it to you and let YOU certify it... it's 1/3 of the cost. Your choice. We aren't paying to certify squat.

Answer from both FAA and the upstream contractor: We don't care what it costs. Whichever one is certified we will be buying that one. We are the only people bidding. We don't care what any of this costs.

No competitor ever tried. They didn't want to pay for certification on products that had dropped 1/3 in price market-wide as they got better and cheaper. See how they were stuck?

How did ours get certified? The military bought one. Literally one. Someone decided that was good enough to sign off a certification somewhere.

There's a lot of parallels here with avionics if you dig a bit. But ground components? Sell to the military first. They buy it, it'll fly through (pun intended) FAA's procurement processes. For whatever reason. We were one step removed from it. As long as we gave the thing a part number that anyone could order, it was COTS and met the requirements of the integrator/contractor above us.

If someone did actually call us and want to buy one, we'd offer them the newer ones we sold at 1/3 the price. Guess how many were sold to the private sector? Zero. But it was available so it was COTS.
 
denverpilot said:
But no solid evidence (that I've seen) that it has been any cheaper in the long term.




This is fairly vague. When you say the gear wasn't possible to fix there's a lot of parts between a radar dish spinning around and a controller's screen. The radars are a well known entity and actually not that high tech nor hard to repair. People to DO it as a living are a little bit in short supply though. Not many people see a long term career in civilian radar maintenance being for them. Military, definitely. Lots of neat things going on there, always. ATC radar is pretty much the bottom of the heap when it comes to "interesting radar jobs".



No. Flat no. It was not. No technical document EVER promised that from ADS-B. The only place you'll find it is in "NextGen" marketing material. No specification EVER promised ADS-B would do any of those things OR ever be primary for ATC target data. There were numerous documents that said the radars had to remain with not even a hint of them being decommissioned.




It will not and can not. Just the fact that it's spoofable kills that, let alone various other problems. The entire thing had to be re-designed to even fit in the time/spectrum allotted in dense traffic areas, or we wouldn't have UAT here and nowhere else.



Having worked as a sub-contractor on an FAA tech contract, procurement doesn't work this way. I'd love it if it did, but no Federal agency ever will say "This company has a contract to provide our services and we won't oversee any of it. They can use whatever technology they like..." We had mountains of paperwork documenting an outdated system that we HAD better and newer gear rolling out the door to customers that did all the things the FAA system did, and much more. But it, like avionics, wasn't "certified".

We sold the FAA the ancient one. We weren't going to pay to certify the new ones, FAA via our upstream contractor was paying triple what the new ones sold for easily, and wanted us to pay to certify the new ones... LOL. Nope. Here's the old one. And our invoice.

Y'all want a new one? We'll ship it to you and let YOU certify it... it's 1/3 of the cost. Your choice. We aren't paying to certify squat.

Answer from both FAA and the upstream contractor: We don't care what it costs. Whichever one is certified we will be buying that one. We are the only people bidding. We don't care what any of this costs.

No competitor ever tried. They didn't want to pay for certification on products that had dropped 1/3 in price market-wide as they got better and cheaper. See how they were stuck?

How did ours get certified? The military bought one. Literally one. Someone decided that was good enough to sign off a certification somewhere.

There's a lot of parallels here with avionics if you dig a bit. But ground components? Sell to the military first. They buy it, it'll fly through (pun intended) FAA's procurement processes. For whatever reason. We were one step removed from it. As long as we gave the thing a part number that anyone could order, it was COTS and met the requirements of the integrator/contractor above us.

If someone did actually call us and want to buy one, we'd offer them the newer ones we sold at 1/3 the price. Guess how many were sold to the private sector? Zero. But it was available so it was COTS.
Click to expand...


As to the equipment I suppose it was more "not cost effective" to continue to maintain rather than "hard to maintain". I have no personal experience with maintaining radar so I'm repeating hearsay. POA heresy, I know.

Next gen != ADS-B. And next gen was intended to do all that. I know that from personal conversations with two friends one of whom was the architect and one who was responsible for figuring out the regulatory impacts. Both FAA employees (one now retired). Both smart and savvy folks. What happened between there and here ( and the spoof ability of GPS) is a whole 'nother can o worms.

I work in DoD contracting today and for the last 20 years as a prime and sub contractor. We have contracts on the books right now that are service based incentive fee contracts where the hardware and software is our problem. No oversight other than meeting the performance requirements of the service, so yes: sometimes Federal acquisition works that way. For an example check out the Flight school XXI contract (not ours). It is a contract to provide military helicopter training. It uses simulators built by L3, CSC and somebody else. The only say the government has over the systems is proclaiming them training ready. All the contract "pays for" is hours of training provided.

As to LockMart & Leidos, I have no idea whether it was cheaper but I do know LockMart did upgrade all the hardware as a cost saving measure for them. Whether they passed it along to the government, I frankly doubt it.

While not the FAA, this federal contracting world is where I live. There's more variety of contracting than I would hav ever guessed. Much of it screwed up and counter productive true, but not all.

John
 
I read Leidos is on about a 100 million per year budget. In 2004, AFSS was about 550 million budget. I think it's safe to say LM came close to their 10 year 2.2 billion savings.
 
denverpilot said:
But no solid evidence (that I've seen) that it has been any cheaper in the long term.




This is fairly vague. When you say the gear wasn't possible to fix there's a lot of parts between a radar dish spinning around and a controller's screen. The radars are a well known entity and actually not that high tech nor hard to repair. People to DO it as a living are a little bit in short supply though. Not many people see a long term career in civilian radar maintenance being for them. Military, definitely. Lots of neat things going on there, always. ATC radar is pretty much the bottom of the heap when it comes to "interesting radar jobs".



No. Flat no. It was not. No technical document EVER promised that from ADS-B. The only place you'll find it is in "NextGen" marketing material. No specification EVER promised ADS-B would do any of those things OR ever be primary for ATC target data. There were numerous documents that said the radars had to remain with not even a hint of them being decommissioned.




It will not and can not. Just the fact that it's spoofable kills that, let alone various other problems. The entire thing had to be re-designed to even fit in the time/spectrum allotted in dense traffic areas, or we wouldn't have UAT here and nowhere else.



Having worked as a sub-contractor on an FAA tech contract, procurement doesn't work this way. I'd love it if it did, but no Federal agency ever will say "This company has a contract to provide our services and we won't oversee any of it. They can use whatever technology they like..." We had mountains of paperwork documenting an outdated system that we HAD better and newer gear rolling out the door to customers that did all the things the FAA system did, and much more. But it, like avionics, wasn't "certified".

We sold the FAA the ancient one. We weren't going to pay to certify the new ones, FAA via our upstream contractor was paying triple what the new ones sold for easily, and wanted us to pay to certify the new ones... LOL. Nope. Here's the old one. And our invoice.

Y'all want a new one? We'll ship it to you and let YOU certify it... it's 1/3 of the cost. Your choice. We aren't paying to certify squat.

Answer from both FAA and the upstream contractor: We don't care what it costs. Whichever one is certified we will be buying that one. We are the only people bidding. We don't care what any of this costs.

No competitor ever tried. They didn't want to pay for certification on products that had dropped 1/3 in price market-wide as they got better and cheaper. See how they were stuck?

How did ours get certified? The military bought one. Literally one. Someone decided that was good enough to sign off a certification somewhere.

There's a lot of parallels here with avionics if you dig a bit. But ground components? Sell to the military first. They buy it, it'll fly through (pun intended) FAA's procurement processes. For whatever reason. We were one step removed from it. As long as we gave the thing a part number that anyone could order, it was COTS and met the requirements of the integrator/contractor above us.

If someone did actually call us and want to buy one, we'd offer them the newer ones we sold at 1/3 the price. Guess how many were sold to the private sector? Zero. But it was available so it was COTS.
Click to expand...
Welcome to my entire job...
 
jsstevens said:
I work in DoD contracting today and for the last 20 years as a prime and sub contractor. We have contracts on the books right now that are service based incentive fee contracts where the hardware and software is our problem. No oversight other than meeting the performance requirements of the service, so yes: sometimes Federal acquisition works that way. For an example check out the Flight school XXI contract (not ours). It is a contract to provide military helicopter training. It uses simulators built by L3, CSC and somebody else. The only say the government has over the systems is proclaiming them training ready. All the contract "pays for" is hours of training provided.
Click to expand...

And that's DoD. Not FAA. Not saying it couldn't happen in FAA but they're a lot more sensitive to jobs going away when contracts are created. DoD might TDY someone to do that "training ready" part and then they'd go away. FAA would assign someone FOREVER to continually do that part.

The radars are pretty much fine. A friend is in FAA Ops still. He works on the things. Pretty much they run, and the boxes on-site are standardized and swappable. No real maintenance issues with any of it other than access to the site, low staffing out west here, and waiting on parts.

Where it gets messy is the telecom connectivity, and back end processing, and of course the end result at the "user interface" to use IT terms. That's the stuff Raytheon is updating.

But the radar sites themselves aren't much harder to operate today than they've ever been. There's moving mechanical parts and those require all the usual maintenance one would expect of rotating a big old antenna around and a room with racks and boxes, but the stuff in the racks isn't all that horribly out of date anymore like some of the horrid stories of the past.

Of course some of the radars are in BFE. He doesn't seem to like his visits to Wyoming in Winter very much, and the Motel 6 which is the only game in town... ha. The life of a Field Engineer. BTDT. Wouldn't be a bad gig for a single person. Pays decently after a while.

They've been advertising openings for a few years now. The kids aren't interested when no travel and remote access fix most things in IT these days. Plus, computer folk usually don't want to have to also pick up a grease gun and go hit all the zerks while they're waiting on a software patch to load. :)

It's a weird but interesting job. He seems to like it.

As I've mentioned before, if there were no military/air defense need for primary radar, wide area multilateralization with fixed receive antennas and receiver sites and a much smaller number of transmit sites, would easily replace secondary radar coast to coast very inexpensively. One box, one stick antenna, and the usual telecom backhaul to the processing location. Cheap. Effective. Already in use in the FAA system. Certified. No need to change a single piece of gear in any aircraft.

But that's not what ADS-B is really about. It's about identification. A transponder code and triangulated location as accurate as a spinning antenna, isn't good enough for traffic safety, apparently. Because it isn't about safety. Or saving money. WAM accomplishes both without NexGen.
 
denverpilot said:
And that's DoD. Not FAA. Not saying it couldn't happen in FAA but they're a lot more sensitive to jobs going away when contracts are created. DoD might TDY someone to do that "training ready" part and then they'd go away. FAA would assign someone FOREVER to continually do that part.

[snipped a bunch of good stuff about maintaining radar sites]
Click to expand...

So it's not that Federal contracting doesn't work that way, it's that you believe the FAA won't work that way. Maybe. The FSS contract (as far as I can tell, I haven't read the whole thing) works exactly that way. They are contracted and paid for providing the service. How the back end works is their problem. I'll ask the Leidos folks. I know some of them. We're a sub on a different contract that was part of the Lockheed Martin business unit that got sold to Leidos so now we are a sub to that part of Leidos.

I will say the contracting environment (DoD, DHS, etc.) has changed a lot in the last few years. Some good, some not so much.

And remember ADS-B != NextGen. It's part of how they're trying to implement NextGen, but there was a lot more to the design and a lot more capability that was part of the design.

John
 
jsstevens said:
As to the equipment I suppose it was more "not cost effective" to continue to maintain rather than "hard to maintain". I have no personal experience with maintaining radar so I'm repeating hearsay. POA heresy, I know.

Next gen != ADS-B. And next gen was intended to do all that. I know that from personal conversations with two friends one of whom was the architect and one who was responsible for figuring out the regulatory impacts. Both FAA employees (one now retired). Both smart and savvy folks. What happened between there and here ( and the spoof ability of GPS) is a whole 'nother can o worms.

I work in DoD contracting today and for the last 20 years as a prime and sub contractor. We have contracts on the books right now that are service based incentive fee contracts where the hardware and software is our problem. No oversight other than meeting the performance requirements of the service, so yes: sometimes Federal acquisition works that way. For an example check out the Flight school XXI contract (not ours). It is a contract to provide military helicopter training. It uses simulators built by L3, CSC and somebody else. The only say the government has over the systems is proclaiming them training ready. All the contract "pays for" is hours of training provided.

As to LockMart & Leidos, I have no idea whether it was cheaper but I do know LockMart did upgrade all the hardware as a cost saving measure for them. Whether they passed it along to the government, I frankly doubt it.

While not the FAA, this federal contracting world is where I live. There's more variety of contracting than I would hav ever guessed. Much of it screwed up and counter productive true, but not all.

John
Click to expand...

But we didn't accept those simulators until they were ready. The contract required mission ready approval by the Army. For instance, the UH-60 sim at one point had over 160 gripes that we (IPs) noted during the evaluation process. All of those write ups had to be addressed prior to acceptance. Took about 3-4 months but the contractor eventually got most of it right. Over time, it was just as good in most ways as the legacy 60 sim.

On a side note, my claim to fame has to do with one particular flaw. The raised safety cap over the emergency power off button is due to me. ;)
 
And I'd really rather not see ATC privatized. But whether it is or not, I'd REALLY NOT WANT to see it based on user fees.
 
Velocity173 said:
But we didn't accept those simulators until they were ready. The contract required mission ready approval by the Army. For instance, the UH-60 sim at one point had over 160 gripes that we (IPs) noted during the evaluation process. All of those write ups had to be addressed prior to acceptance. Took about 3-4 months but the contractor eventually got most of it right. Over time, it was just as good in most ways as the legacy 60 sim.

On a side note, my claim to fame has to do with one particular flaw. The raised safety cap over the emergency power off button is due to me. ;)
Click to expand...

Nice to meet one of the IPs!

But you didn't get to say what went in those systems, only that they could train effectively, correct? How the contractor built them was up to the contractor.

John
 
WannFly said:
thoughts? experiences ?Think Canada has this rt?

PS: lets not make this a political thread or how capitalism wins/ruins...bla bla bla

as a aircraft owner, all i care about is if i will get a bill when i talk to ATC
Click to expand...

Exactly,

Canada's system costs MORE and as a pilot offers me LESS.
 
jsstevens said:
So it's not that Federal contracting doesn't work that way, it's that you believe the FAA won't work that way. Maybe. The FSS contract (as far as I can tell, I haven't read the whole thing) works exactly that way. They are contracted and paid for providing the service. How the back end works is their problem. I'll ask the Leidos folks. I know some of them. We're a sub on a different contract that was part of the Lockheed Martin business unit that got sold to Leidos so now we are a sub to that part of Leidos.

I will say the contracting environment (DoD, DHS, etc.) has changed a lot in the last few years. Some good, some not so much.

And remember ADS-B != NextGen. It's part of how they're trying to implement NextGen, but there was a lot more to the design and a lot more capability that was part of the design.

John
Click to expand...

Yeah I think Leidos is done that way. FAA *and more importantly the controller's union* fought like hell not to contract out and create the AFSS system. Remember FSS specialists were controllers in the FAA world...

NexGen has *always* been this giant thing of promises and vaporware. Vaporware being what the rest of the tech world calls anything with a design and no implementation. Anybody can make up a design. I can design a replacement for Google, doesn't mean it's ever going to happen.

No offense intended to your friends of course. They might have written some lovely stuff. I've seen great product designs stuck on shelves and lost by companies when someone above the design group said they simply weren't interested in spending any money implementing something.

In the end whatever the marketers call it, NextGen, NexNexGen, Gen o' the Next, GenOfTomorrow -- it has to do something worth the billions spent on it. Or not. Because who cares? Is just fake money right?

Seriously though, even if their design did great things, it doesn't fix the airlines problems. Hub and spoke falls apart when weather goes to crap. That's just physics and weather. They've got TCAS so they didn't really need another radar blip on the "fishfinder". Their "fishfinder has been better than ADS-B for a couple of decades. It provides RAs. Uplink and downlink data? They've had that for a couple decades now too. And ADS-B missed big time on those until UAT fixed it.

Basically nobody figured out what problem they were really trying to solve. I mean sure, we spam cab drivers like some of the features but it wasn't really built for us. No way we're worth the billions spent.

It's very odd. It all got approved mostly as marketing that didn't come true, and graft. It really has no goal and when is "Nex"Gen over with? Never? Is it always NexGen? Will it be NexGen in 2030?

'Cause I'm sure when we were selling stuff to FAA if they had a marketing and graphics staff like they do today, we'd have been "NexGen" for the 80s. And we were selling them 20 year old stuff because they wouldn't take the new stuff. LOL.
 
jsstevens said:
Nice to meet one of the IPs!

But you didn't get to say what went in those systems, only that they could train effectively, correct? How the contractor built them was up to the contractor.

John
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As an IP? Nope. I'm sure the Army gave them product requirements based on the legacy sims. Personally, not sure why they went with a different contractor. If it ain't broke...

The original product they gave us had multiple issues. Visuals made people sick, boost off was essentially impossible to control, couldn't do sling loads, couldn't do autos, etc. They eventually worked out most problems but when I left, you still couldn't do a few tasks in it. Had an excellent threat setup though. I could throw in MIG-29s, MI-17s, SA-6, etc and have the students do actions on contact and threat ID. Was much more realistic than the legacy.
 
Velocity173 said:
On a side note, my claim to fame has to do with one particular flaw. The raised safety cap over the emergency power off button is due to me. ;)
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93df065a0baf340783f48646f8b7dd79.jpg
 
denverpilot said:
Yeah I think Leidos is done that way. FAA *and more importantly the controller's union* fought like hell not to contract out and create the AFSS system. Remember FSS specialists were controllers in the FAA world...

NexGen has *always* been this giant thing of promises and vaporware. Vaporware being what the rest of the tech world calls anything with a design and no implementation. Anybody can make up a design. I can design a replacement for Google, doesn't mean it's ever going to happen.

No offense intended to your friends of course. They might have written some lovely stuff. I've seen great product designs stuck on shelves and lost by companies when someone above the design group said they simply weren't interested in spending any money implementing something.

In the end whatever the marketers call it, NextGen, NexNexGen, Gen o' the Next, GenOfTomorrow -- it has to do something worth the billions spent on it. Or not. Because who cares? Is just fake money right?

Seriously though, even if their design did great things, it doesn't fix the airlines problems. Hub and spoke falls apart when weather goes to crap. That's just physics and weather. They've got TCAS so they didn't really need another radar blip on the "fishfinder". Their "fishfinder has been better than ADS-B for a couple of decades. It provides RAs. Uplink and downlink data? They've had that for a couple decades now too. And ADS-B missed big time on those until UAT fixed it.

Basically nobody figured out what problem they were really trying to solve. I mean sure, we spam cab drivers like some of the features but it wasn't really built for us. No way we're worth the billions spent.

It's very odd. It all got approved mostly as marketing that didn't come true, and graft. It really has no goal and when is "Nex"Gen over with? Never? Is it always NexGen? Will it be NexGen in 2030?

'Cause I'm sure when we were selling stuff to FAA if they had a marketing and graphics staff like they do today, we'd have been "NexGen" for the 80s. And we were selling them 20 year old stuff because they wouldn't take the new stuff. LOL.
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No argument on vaporware. Paper software can do anything!

And the hub & spoke system will continue to cause delays, even when the weather doesn't go bad. There's only so many landings and takeoffs you can do on those runways. But as conceived, NextGen reduced spacing in between planes and made particularly descents more efficient. Then they handed the designs to somebody else and here we are...

I wonder if anybody will ever bite on a ground based system to backup GPS? We could use long range radio signals from fixed points with timing signals... Nah.

John
 
jsstevens said:
I wonder if anybody will ever bite on a ground based system to backup GPS? We could use long range radio signals from fixed points with timing signals... Nah.
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LOL LOL. I heard the Loran-C towers were demolished. If they'd have left them standing, it wouldn't have taken much to re-commission them. :)

Of course they were all the rage when I was selling gear to the FAA. Articles in magazines about them, demos by famous authors flying in testbed airplanes... someone got them approved in all the CAP planes...

Haha. Dead tech walking. That's pretty much how I feel about ADS-B. It'll be around a while but it's already old news. We'll just get done stuffing it in everyone's panel and along will come the NetGen2 "new hotness". And it still won't move the needle on the death toll, since midairs are exceedingly rare compared to Loss of Control and CFIT.

I was looking for something else today and ran across the NTSB report of the Flight Check (!!!) King Air that departed VFR into IMC and killed four. The freaking FAA airplane.

(I was searching for the report from 1986 when the FAA SabreJet landed gear up 21 feet short of the runway in Liberal KS after arriving from OKC, slid the entire length of 7000' and another quarter mile into the golf course. Sending the photo to someone who hadn't seen it. Amazingly all four walked away. Someone tried to do a go-around gear up on a 7000' runway. In the FAA's jet. That had to hurt the ego a bit. I found the report. Someone had pulled it from microfische and typed it into a website. Remember the tech hotness of microfiche? Haha.)
 
denverpilot said:
93df065a0baf340783f48646f8b7dd79.jpg
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Lol! Well it had a safety cap over the button but it was level with the top of the button. I was getting out of the seat and the tip of my boot was enough to depress the button. Thing comes off motion, all the visuals go black, red flashing lights and alarms going off! CSC guy actually thanked me. He wrote down in his little gripe notebook to order raised caps for all the emergency off buttons.
 
I duuno. . . really; maybe an approach like for NASA? They (NASA) can't do much, at least not efficiently - they did get a bunch of the big lift done, at stupendous expense, in the early days, and now it looks like private concerns will carry the ball going forward, or at least in "partnership". . .

The FAA has been stop, stumble, and fall across the spectrum of their role in aviation; they do ATC OK, but at fantastic cost; NextGen is embarrassing for them. Or should be. I don't see FAA getting "better" as a policy implementer, or a driver of aviation technology, just because ATC goes private. Unless the long term planning goes with it. . .
 
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