National Airspace System Capital Investment Plan

This is the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) first annual Aviation System Capital Investment Plan (CIP). The CIP describes the policies and strategies that the FAA will pursue in addressing key concerns of the National Airspace System (NAS). The Plan addresses safety, efficiency, traffic demands, aging equipment and facilities, and airspace use. It creates a foundation for evolution of the existing NAS through use of new technologies and development of new products obtained from continuing research. Long range advances in automation, communication, and satellite services that are being researched and developed will facilitate more automated control concepts, remove fixed-routing constraints, provide high levels of civil aviation system safety, and facilitate operations of future generations of aircraft. A sound planning process will provide the flexibility to capture the opportunities that new technologies provide and use these new technologies to achieve the FAA's mission.

The National Airspace System (NAS) requires a high degree of reliability, availability, and resiliency to ensure uninterrupted delivery of aviation services while providing the highest level of safety in the world. Our highly trained, certified professional air traffic controllers require state-of-the-art equipment and dependable communication, navigation, and surveillance systems to deliver world-class service to all NAS users. Significant safeguards and redundancies are in place to ensure that NAS infrastructure and systems meet stringent reliability, availability, and safety standards to prevent service disruptions, and to minimize system impact should one occur. The programs included in the Capital Investment Plan (CIP) are critical to FAA's continued success in achieving and maintaining this high level of safety and service to the public and support the development and implementation of the ongoing transition to the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). CIP programs also support continued FAA leadership in global aviation and the development of future applications for new technologies such as Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast (ADS-B). The CIP provides the agency's latest five-year plan for the F&E programs supporting the development, acquisition, implementation, and sustainment of the systems that provide the infrastructure, the technology, and the capabilities of the NAS.

The official Fed. Aviation Admin. capital investment plan based on mission needs and future concepts. Covers: service areas (airport, terminal, aircraft and aircrew); communications (voice switches, telecomm satellite); facilities (flight service, power systems sustained support); mission support (aircraft fleet modernization, precision automated tracking system); navigation and landing (direction finder, instrument landing system); surveillance (terminal radar program, precision runway monitor); and weather (weather radar, airport surveillance radar).

This is the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) third Aviation System Capital Investment Plan (CIP). It describes the Facilities and Equipment (F and E) programs that the FAA will pursue in addressing key concerns of the national airspace system (NAS), such as safety, efficiency, traffic demands, equipment and facilities, and airspace use. The CIP creates a plan for evolution of the existing NAS through use of these technologies and development of new products obtained from continuing research. The CIP is organized into six chapters. The Introduction provides an overview of the Plan, NAS goals and national priorities, the national air transportation system, a crosswalk to other plans, return on investment, recent changes, and document organization. A key goal of the Secretary of Transportation's National Transportation Policy is the completion of the NAS Plan. To meet and document this goal, the Original NAS Plan chapter presents all remaining original projects. The Growth chapter describes those requirements that expand, relocate, or consolidate existing facilities/equipment. The Infrastructure Replenishment chapter covers additional items identified since development of the original NAS Plan. This chapter presents projects that refurbish structures, replace obsolete equipment, or relocate facilities to maintain service, improve effectiveness, or reduce cost. The Supportability chapter describes projects that support logistics, provide for personnel training and manage the information and human resource aspects of NAS modernization. The last chapter, New Capabilities, addresses projects which, if implemented, are expected to add significant new capabilities to the NAS.

FAA catalogs its acquisition programs in its annually updated Capital Investment Plan. The CIP identifies planned capital investment in the National Airspace System for the next 5 years consistent with the amount requested in the agency's annual budget submission.

In 1981, the FAA began a program to modernize the air traffic control (ATC) system by replacing aging equipment & accommodating predicted growth in air traffic. It has had difficulty for more than two decades in meeting cost, schedule, & performance targets. The performance-based Air Traffic Org. (ATO) was created in 2004 to improve the management of the modernization effort. In Oct. 2004, a panel discussed the factors that have affected FAA's ability to acquire new ATC systems. They identified steps that FAA's ATO could take in the short term to address these factors, as well as longer term steps that could be taken to improve the modernization program's chances of success & help the ATO achieve its mission.