FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and other federal and industry stakeholders on Tuesday shed new light on a planned air traffic control (ATC) software that could predict airspace conditions days, weeks, or even months in advance.
Duffy first alluded to the AI-based software, called SMART (Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories), on Friday. According to Frank Matus, director of uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) integration for Thales, the FAA’s vision is to predict weather, traffic, and other conditions “somewhere between six months and up to hours before operation.”
Bloomberg on Friday reported that Thales is one of three vendors competing for SMART, alongside Palantir and Airspace Intelligence (ASI). Matus did not confirm the company’s involvement but said “one could infer” it from the report.
“It’s great to be part of this, and we’re looking forward to helping the government modernize America’s airspace,” Matus told FLYING at the Modern Skies Summit in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.
Matus said SMART is “not about the safety-critical air traffic management function that the controllers perform today.” Rather, the idea is to reduce delays, cancellations, and other schedule deviations, helping ATCs plan their day and ensure towers are properly staffed.
“What the agency is trying to do is figure out a way to do strategic deconfliction with schedules first, then look across the National Airspace System [NAS] to see which sectors of the airspace may be overloaded throughout the course of the day,” he said.
With that view, the FAA will “try and rebalance traffic to make delays a thing of the past, traffic management initiatives fewer, ground delay programs fewer, and add more predictability to the system,” Matus added.
Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), similarly said SMART is “about preplanning, not about somehow separating airplanes.”
“Humans will separate airplanes,” Daniels said. “Humans will be responsible for human lives. What we haven’t had is a system that helps us manage the [NAS] before the day even begins.”
Such a system, Daniels said, could give “controllers more time to focus on the critical things that happen—an emergency, an aircraft that’s running low on fuel, a weather system that’s rolling in.”
Getting SMARTer
According to Bedford, SMART will manage trajectories for 55,000 daily IFR flights, reducing controller workload and allowing them to focus on “exceptions.”
“The way we operate the airspace today adds risk to this system, because we’re putting all of these aircraft in the same traffic lanes,” Bedford said. “It’s like Los Angeles gridlock up there…We can actually structure and organize this traffic before [airlines] actually publish schedules and sell tickets.”
Bedford predicted SMART will translate to lower fuel burden, less aircraft downtime, shorter block times, and faster flights. Already, he said, three vendors have created “true digital twins” of the entire NAS “that allows us to use predictive analytics to take in what will be future schedules.”
“The technology’s advanced in a way now that we feel highly confident that we can accomplish these goals,” Bedford said.
According to Duffy, however, the FAA does not have the money to deploy SMART. Congress last year allocated $12.5 billion to the agency’s Brand New ATC System (BNATCS) effort. But Duffy said the funds are earmarked for certain projects, and software is not one of them. He has requested a further $20 billion for more upgrades.
“It’s gonna take us time to develop [SMART], deploy it, debug it, train on it,” he said. “So getting that software started now, hopefully, as our build completes with all of the infrastructure, we’ll have the technology of the software ready to meet up in two and a half years.”
Another question is whether controllers will be on board. Daniels said NATCA has been a “partner” on SMART. But until the software is actually deployed, there will likely be detractors.
“They’re skeptics, and we should remain skeptics until it’s actually in our hands,” Daniels said. “For 27 years of my career, this is the first time I’ve ever seen an investment like this.”
FAA Makes Progress on ATC Modernization
Bedford described SMART as one of three “pillars” of airspace modernization, the others being BNATCS and efforts to grow the controller workforce.
The FAA has made serious progress upgrading what Chris Sununu, president and CEO of Airlines for America, described as a system held together by “shoestring and duct tape.”
Duffy said the effort involves 52 vendors and about 4,600 FAA facilities. That’s “more sites than Chick-fil-A has restaurants in America,” he said, “and we work on Sundays.”
Officials said the FAA has replaced half of the antiquated copper wiring that carries ATC radar and communications data with fiber optic, satellite, and wireless connections. Duffy said Newark Liberty International Airport (KEWR) in New Jersey—which suffered multiple 90-second ATC blackouts in 2025—has one of the best on-time rates in the nation since its copper wiring was upgraded.
The FAA has installed 40 out of 450 planned digital voice switches and electronic flight strips at 17 of 89 planned towers. More than 3,000 radios have been upgraded across 250 sites, out of a total of 27,000 planned upgrades.
“With new radios, we have crystal-clear communication,” Duffy said. “We don’t have static anymore.”
The BNATCS effort also involves an array of new radar systems. Two out of 53 planned surface movement radars (SMRs) have been installed in Houston, with more installations underway in San Diego, New Orleans, and Newark. New surface awareness systems are installed at 54 airports.
“With this new surface awareness system, [controllers are] gonna have all of the airplanes on the airfield on the screen in front of them,” Duffy said.
Terminal flight data management (TFDM) systems are live at 17 of 89 planned airports. Of 220 planned surface awareness initiative (SAI) system installations, 54 are complete and a further 42 are underway, per Justin Ciaccio, president of BNATCS prime integrator Peraton.
“These systems give controllers a real-time picture of everything moving on the ground,” Ciaccio said.
In addition, contractors RTX and Indra are installing 612 new radars to replace 1980s-era systems. Other planned improvements include Enterprise-Information Display Systems (E-IDS) at 450 facilities, tower simulation systems at 117 towers, and 174 new weather camera systems in Alaska.
Ciaccio said that beyond SMART, artificial intelligence is critical to the entire BNATCS effort.
“We’re deploying revolutionary agentic AI technology for our Peraton team and the entire FAA enterprise…to manage this program at a speed and scale that is simply impossible for humans alone,” he said. “Tasks that used to take the team days or weeks, they are now complete in minutes or even seconds.”
With better technology, Duffy hopes BNATCS and SMART avoid the pitfalls of the FAA’s NextGen initiative. Per a government watchdog, NextGen delivered only 16 percent of its promised benefits despite a budget of $36 billion over two decades.
“Twenty-five years later, we are still using floppy disks, paper flight strips, and we are using an old network,” Duffy said. “Billions of dollars was put behind that effort. And 25 years later, it was never done.”
