FAA Chooses Defense Company Without Civilian Flight Experience To Overhaul Air Traffic Control

The FAA announced that it has contracted defense company Peraton to handle the process of upgrading America's woefully outdated air traffic control system. These sorts of projects are normally handled by the FAA itself, but in a statement, the aviation agency declared that this "innovative, first-of-its-kind contract... will incentivize results and hold [Peraton] accountable." That's of a piece with the Trump administration's wider push to privatize much of the government's aerospace activities.

Peraton doesn't have any previous experience working on civilian flight systems, unlike its rival bidder Parsons Corp, per the Associated Press. According to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Peraton won out by submitting an "innovative approach" that would accelerate the timeline if successful. That in turn would achieve one of the key goals of this project: finishing work while Donald Trump is still president. Priorities!

So we have a privatized upgrade process for air traffic control (a first) using a new approach (a first) on a very aggressive schedule (a first). Not exactly taking the cautious route, then. Just to cap this all off, Congress has only allocated $12.5 billion for this update via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Duffy himself claims is nearly $20 billion short. What could go wrong?

There sure is a lot to do on the Brand New Air Traffic Control System, or BNATCS, which is pronounced... actually, no human mouth can pronounce that unless you're an eldritch cultist or possibly Swedish. This includes, but sure isn't limited to: 27,000 radios, 600 radars, 5,000 high-speed networking connections, plus the very first new Air Route Traffic Control Center since the 1960s. Oh, and also, one of the five listed priorities for the project is Alaska. Just... Alaska. BNATCS will build the northernmost state 110 new weather stations and 64 more weather cameras.

Can't the FAA just do all this work itself, as usual? Not anymore. The AP notes that deep staffing cuts have come for the agency, meaning it literally does not have the personnel to handle a project like this anymore. Privatization is the only option, then, which is exactly the direction the Trump administration wants to go. That's uncharted territory for a critical infrastructure system with zero room for error. Let's hope Peraton is up to the challenge. For reference, its list of clients has included Special Operations Command, the Department of Homeland Security, and the most elite of them all, the National Park Service. Can it handle every airport in the country at once?

Fortunately, the remaining staff at the FAA have been hard at work already. One-third of the old-school copper connections at control towers have been replaced by fiber up to this point. Peraton will be picking up the baton and going the full distance with it. Well, $12.5 billion of the distance, anyway. At bare minimum, at least something is being done, as goodness knows air traffic control is not in great shape right now.