ADS-B TO REPLACE RADAR

Wednesday, April 21, 2021 at 01:28 PM ET

Verified

Radar needs grew somewhat haphazardly. Consequently, it's not uncommon for some areas to have multiple radars that largely overlap. For example, the San Francisco Bay area has Center, plus San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose terminals, plus a couple military installations. Obviously, there are candidates for divestiture, but care must be taken to ensure 100 percent coverage remains.

Key Takeaways:

The FAA's national ADS-B program was driven by early prototypes demonstrating significant reductions in aviation accident rates, leading to a plan for radar divestiture to achieve cost savings and optimize the National Airspace System.
Initial projections for radar divestiture proved overly optimistic, as the actual process is complex, demanding extensive engineering studies, safety risk management, and direct involvement from air traffic control and local stakeholders to ensure safety and operational integrity.
Radar divestiture is an ongoing, evolutionary process focused on optimizing the surveillance network with emerging technologies, and is also linked to initiatives like the SENSR program, which aims to free up radio spectrum to fund future radar system upgrades.

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Capstone, the first large-scale ADSB prototype, was deployed in Alaska in 1999 because Alaska had (and still has) the highest of any state’s aviation accident rate. Despite this challenging environment, by 2006, Capstoneequipped aircraft demonstrated a 47 per cent decline in accident rate compared to non-equipped aircraft in southwest Alaska.

That same year, the FAA integrated Capstone into the national ADS-B program. In 2007, the FAA published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for ADSB Out. After discussion and review, the FAA issued its Final Rule in 2010.