Senate Votes To Replace Aviation Radar With GPS 457
plover writes "The US Senate on Monday passed by a 93-0 margin a bill that would implement the FAA's NextGen plan to replace aviation radar with GPS units. It will help pay for the upgrade by increasing aviation fuel taxes on private aircraft. It will require two inspections per year on foreign repair stations that work on US planes. And it will ban pilots from using personal electronics in the cockpit. This just needs to be reconciled with the House version and is expected to become law soon. This was discussed on Slashdot a few years ago."
Great... (Score:4, Insightful)
While the nextgen plan is a good thing, the rest is crap. We can get legislation to ban laptops, but we can't get the HORRENDOUSLY dangerous rest regulations fixed. How about NOT giving in to the airline lobbyists for once and actually doing something to make air travel SAFER????
Satellite vulnerability (Score:5, Insightful)
This just adds to the consequences of the inevitable solar flare that will knock out all our satellites.
sounds risky (Score:5, Insightful)
Security (Score:4, Insightful)
So each plane sends its location back to air traffic control? How is this system secured? This will be breached repeatedly. Also, what happens when a solar storm takes out the satellites? I'm sure GPS is a better system under normal circumstances, but circumstances are not always normal.
Inquiring minds... (Score:5, Insightful)
So exactly how prone will this system be to;
Don't get me wrong, this has a lot of upside, it's just important we have a good idea what the down side is, how significant it is, and what the expected impact on American business and transportation will be.
Re:Great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:93-0 margin (Score:3, Insightful)
And what were the other 7 senators doing that day? Biden (the VP) is technically part of the senate, but I'll give him a pass on this. I'll be checking to see if my senator(s) were busy sleeping in that day.
Uh, the VP only votes in case of a tie.
Soo the FAA said this was good? (Score:5, Insightful)
In cockpit systems a standby attitude device must be installed in the cockpit as a fallback system unless the existing cockpit systems have dual redundancy.
Along the same token the GPS DAMN WELL better have a backup system of some sort. This backup may be a radar system or it may be an INS system combined with altitude sensors or use of VOR/TACAN systems. There just has to be something there.
No personal electronics for pilots? (Score:2, Insightful)
Load of communist crap... (Score:1, Insightful)
A system that works is already in place. Maybe GPS based systems can work better, provide fuel cost savings frmo more direct routes, better traffic awareness, etc. Maybe it can, maybe it won't. The problem I ahve with this is the forced compliance and tax of privately used fuel, making the people who DO NOT USE commercial/government regulated flight pay for upgrades to private airlines which are heavily subsidized already. This is a slap in the face to all red blooded Americans and yet another scrap of our Constitution burned.
If this system really has merit, then the airlines would be interested in upgrading their fleet on their own, in coordination with the FAA. I recall GPS based navigation systems enabled a commercial lfight to save something like 4% fuel by flying a more direct and efficient route from Australia to California. So there may be merit in that such a system could offer real cost savings and pay for itself over time.
Re:Finally Congress gets down to business (Score:3, Insightful)
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of
government. It can only exist until the voters discover
that they can vote themselves largess from the public
treasury. From that time on the majority always votes
for the candidates promising the most benefits from the
public treasury, with the results that a democracy
always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed
by a dictatorship.
-- Alexander Fraser Tytler (1742-1813)
I'd worry about a buggy GPS unit (Score:3, Insightful)
Really guys? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:93-0 margin (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, there are a couple of senators who are sick and cannot attend, and if it wasn't for the amendment to the health care reform bill, many of them would have been off on junkets or in committee meetings. 93 is actually a high number for such an uncontroversial bill.
Re:Security (Score:4, Insightful)
So each plane sends its location back to air traffic control?
ADS-B
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillance-broadcast [wikipedia.org]
How is this system secured? This will be breached repeatedly.
No technical means what so ever.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillance-broadcast#Public_Access_to_ADS-B [wikipedia.org]
No public reports of anyone intentionally messing with the 50 year old transponder system, which basically did "about the same thing" but without GPS. Probably because the military spent enormous amounts of money on gear and training to stop the Russians from doing it effectively, by being able to pinpoint the source, launch HARM missiles at the source, etc. If you can do a better job than a world superpower, then the USAF might be concerned... maybe.
There is an economic limitation in that the cost of the gear to "mess with the system" would be staggeringly far in excess of the cost of a simple cheap surface to air missile or an explosive in a suitcase (or shoe). And when all is said and done, you've knocked out air surveillance, something that happens on occasion right now due to equipment failure and its "no big deal".
Also, what happens when a solar storm takes out the satellites?
GPS sats are pretty tough, vaguely EMP proof. They were built and launched by the military for the military, you know.
Note that plenty of small planes fly with no transponders or IFR gear, today... You won't get 3 landings per minute at ohare and IFR would seem to be borderline impossible, but by no means do you have to "shut down ALL traffic" or all airplanes will magically fall out of the sky.
The cheapest/simplest solution might be to scramble the AWACS planes temporarily, until you can hotwire some patriot missile radars into the civilian facilities.
It would be an expensive and annoying PITA, but far less severe than the first couple days post-9/11
Re:The way I read it, radar won't be retired. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm guessing that they will not throw out radar entirely for primary surveillance. They'll need it to track things that don't transmit their position, like aircraft with failed electronics.
Or drug smugglers, or hijackers, or an incoming air raid, or anybody else who doesn't want to intentionally broadcast their location... Granted, civilian primary radar is not going to help much with an incoming military air raid.
Overall, however, I think that it is a good way to cut down quite a bit of the cost (potentially) and provide better service.
Re:Finally Congress gets down to business (Score:1, Insightful)
Lets not confuse pompous pronouncements with facts. The three most stable governments in the world i.e. the ones that have been in continuous existence the longest are Switzerland, the UK and the USA all democracies. (I can never remember whether we are on the third, fourth, or fifth Reich).
Tax private aircraft?! Again! (Score:1, Insightful)
They keep making it more expensive for us private pilots to operate our own aircraft. The airline lobby wants to destroy private aviation, and the gov seems to fall right in with it. Howabout instead of taxing the people who will NEVER use it or see it, tax the airline industry? You don't tax the people of Texas for the new roads in Washington.
Re:Great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Many issues with our government are due to lazy and inept voters. Only vote on an issue if you are well informed and NOT listening to propaganda, we vote these guys in and we can vote them out if they don't do their job.
This is bullshit of the most dangerous sort. You're making the naive assumption that these politicians are ordinary people, capable of making independent choices and casting votes of their own choosing.
Frankly, you should know better.
Who needs it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Satellite vulnerability (Score:5, Insightful)
Well lets look at the benefits.
1. More accurate. GPS can produce a more accurate position fixes than radar can.
2. More reliable. The ATC radar system is big expensive and is a point of failure. With GPS transponders you can replace the radar with a few simple and redundant data links.
3. Can provide more coverage. Every aircraft in the system can transit it's location even when out of radar range. Radar is limited by line of site. "ATC radar we will not get into back scatter systems as they are not used for ATC"
Downsides.
1. If the GPS system goes down we are in a world of hurt. To be honest if the GPS system goes down we are already in a world of hurt.
2. If you turn of your GPS beacon you are invisible. Not that big of a change really. If you turn your transponder off you may also be invisible to some ATCs
3, Dangers from jamming, How hard will it be to jam the GPS signal or worse spoof it near an airport?
The ATC system and air navigation system in the US has been in need of an overhaul for a long time.
VOR/DME systems where very useful in the day but GPS is much more accurate.
Most communications are still using analog voice systems that have changed very little since the 40s and 50s.
Of course there is a huge problem with any massive upgrade.
That is simply cost.
There are thousands of small Mom and Pop airports and FBOs that are just barley staying in business as it is. They can not afford spending thousands of dollars to get new radios.
Then you have all the private pilots that also really can not afford the cost of upgrading. It is a myth that all private pilots are rich. A lot of them just have a passion for flying. They tend to be no more rich than must boat owners. That and people tend to forget that General Aviation also provides lots of jobs as well. Not as much as it used to but still a good number.
I fear that unless these beacons are really cheap we will see a lot of aircraft grounded or restricted to none controlled airports.
Re:GPS and altitude (Score:4, Insightful)
I've noticed that when the lives of hundreds of thousands of people depend on a single piece of equipment, that it tends to be designed and tested to higher standards than cheap consumer equipment..
This is BAD (Score:4, Insightful)
I can tell from comments that not many of you are private pilots. They are paying for this with yet another tax on fuel for private planes. The FAA keeps raising fees on everything associated with having a private plane while giving big breaks to commercial companies. I'm sick of it.
Re:Great... (Score:2, Insightful)
You also assume that kicking the lobbyist-influenced bum out will mean he gets replaced with something better. The sad fact is that if you want to get to national office, you need a LOT of money, which means you need corporate help, which means you're automatically predisposed to listen to lobbyists. There's no way around it until we get rid of the multimillion dollar campaigns.
Re:What about UFO's (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesnt sound safe to me, especially in a post 911 world.
Well, of course not. If you're one of those people who uses the phrase "post-9/11 world" without (conscious) irony, you're never going to feel safe. Just be thankful you have the specter of terrorism to focus your fear on, instead of the countless vague fears that preyed on your mind in the long and dreadful period between the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of al Qaeda.
Re:Security (Score:3, Insightful)
So what? The current system is breached repeatedly. All you had to do was turn off your transponder.
Both? (Score:3, Insightful)
For the sake of safety and security, why don't we use both? It isn't like they are mutually exclusive... Then if there is a failure, you have a, you know, a backup plan? Not to mention we have these new fangled things called computers, that are like, really good at doing calculations really fast... so you could like correlate both systems to each other and increase the accuracy of both likely. I am already assuming that they are going to use base stations to auto correct the positions from known values also. Anyway the more redundancy the better I say.
Re:Finally Congress gets down to business (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh -- and to back up the GP's point, the US has been stripping the constitution of its protections our founders provided to slow or stop popular "passions" from dramatically changing our government quickly (see Federalist 10). The 17th amendment is a prime example -- and is marching us closer and closer to a direct democracy -- and our days *WILL* be numbered.
Re:Finally Congress gets down to business (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of people believe that God created the Earth 4,000 years ago. That doesn't mean it's true.
Re:Great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great... (Score:3, Insightful)
No one is going to switch off radars. The GPS system in question will supplement radars, but will make areas outside of radar coverage more visible. This will mean the eventual elimination of a number of jet routes and allow many planes to fly more directly using GPS navigation because their positions will be reported accurately to ground-based controllers.
In high-density locations, radars will still be required because a plane that loses power also may stop transmitting its transponder signal and may stop receiving its GPS coordinates. This is the reason why I carry a charged hand-held NAVCOM radio in my flight bag. If I lose all power, including the stand-by battery, I still want to be able to talk to someone. It may not have the range that my aircraft's radio has, but chances are I'll be able to find someone, and even if I can't hear them, they may be able to hear me and find out where in the boonies I landed. If I'm closer, I can use it to talk to the tower and hopefully make it to the airport safely.
Besides, GPS upgrades aren't cheap, and there are still a lot of Piper Cubs out there. They're about the simplest aircraft above ultralights that one can fly: no flaps, minimal gauges, and minimal radio gear. I don't think any of them have integrated GPS, and the FAA isn't about to ground all of them.
Tax the little guy! (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a typical example of those without a voice paying for services enjoyed by those who can afford lobbyists. This new system will be paid for with a tax on fuel sold to private pilots. Folks like your next door neighbor who takes his little Cessna out on weekends. However, this system is needed due to heavier and heavier commercial air traffic in Class A and B airspace and commercial traffic over the ocean (both of which are areas which seldom see private pilots).
So, if you can afford a small army of lobbyists and brib... I mean campaign contributions, you can get a law passed that taxes private citizens to raise money to pay for infrastructure necessitated by business activity. This would be like placing a high road-use tax on private automobiles while allowing commercial trucking to use the roads without road-use taxes. Completely backwards.
Re:GPS and altitude (Score:1, Insightful)
The problem is that GPS is *extremely easy* to jam (as in you can do your own wide-area gps jammer with about US$ 5k in parts), causing a massive denial of service. And it is not that well protected against spoofing either.
You'd have to be an idiot to trust a lot of lives to GPS alone. The US military doesn't do it for a reason, and they RUN the thing...
Re:Great... (Score:4, Insightful)
One plane harmlessly overshot its target because somebody was paying attention to a laptop, and now all personal electronics are a threat to our safety and national security. The stewards/stewardesses noticed that they were later than expected, asked the pilots what was up, and they realized their mistake and corrected it. No one was ever in any real danger because we already have safety rules to ensure that there are enough people on the plane to limit the danger posed by these sorts of mistakes. The system worked. But Congress just isn't capable of understanding that. They need someone to blame because the incident got media attention.
Unfortunately, Congress really is that simple-minded. Whenever something bad happens, their primary goal is to find someone or something to blame, then try to come up with a change to the law that will at least appear to thwart whatever scapegoat they chose, all while failing to address any of the real problems, simply because they aren't sufficiently aware of what those problems are to be making these sorts of policy decisions.
The FAA should be making these rules, not Congress. That's why we have federal regulatory agencies. If they aren't making the right rules, Congress should ask the President to replace the head of the agency with someone else. As soon as Congress gets into the regulatory business, we all get screwed. The only role Congress should be playing in this is approving the budget for the new equipment if it was requested by the FAA. If it wasn't requested by the FAA, then the whole bill is crap. Either way, the rest of it is crap.
Re:Great... (Score:5, Insightful)
The worst part about this law? Personal electronics in the cockpits of small planes make then safer when used for flight-related purposes, and using personal electronics for purposes unrelated to flying is already against the rules, so this law can't possibly do anything but cause harm. I can't tell you how many stories I've heard about:
Might as well provide a link to professional pilot discussion [pprune.org] on the subject. To sum up the thread, they mostly think our Congress are a bunch of morons. Usually if the people you are regulating think you are utterly incompetent, that's a clear sign that you should take a step back, pull your head out of your backside, and rethink your position.
Sadly, Congress in their infinite ineptitude, will almost certainly blaze ahead and pass this law, thus dooming some flight a few years from now that could have been saved with personal electronics in the cockpit. And, of course, they'll never know that the flight could have been saved because they aren't smart enough to recognize the hundreds of times this has already happened.
I think we need a constitutional "cooling off period" amendment that says that with the exception of laws to provide financial relief, no law may be passed in response to any accident, catastrophe, or other incident, whether of natural or human cause, for a minimum of one year (or even two) after the incident in question. Such a law would have prevented so many of Congress's worst screw-ups. Hmm. I think I've said this before.
Re:Maybe Americans just fly too much? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, if you force private air travel to be only affordable to the super rich, then they will only be affordable to the super rich. However, *you* would be creating that situation artificially.
Small aircraft are the only reasonable way to get to an awful lot of places, unless you were prefer things taking weeks to get places because everything has to travel by car to a port, and then boat to another one, and then back on yet another car.
Personally, I would rather not artificially distort markets just because I decided I don't like something. Just because Europe decided to make fuel an order of magnitude more expensive than places that don't tax it doesn't make them right.
Re:Maybe Americans just fly too much? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm going to assume you are European, as thats typically the only geographic area ignorant enough to make such a statement ...
We have single states (equivalent to what Europeans refer to as countries) that are nearly half the size of the entire continent you live on. I could drive from one end of your content and back, and still have driven a shorter distance than to my brothers house. I could drive from Iraq to Spain in probably less time than to my brothers house (just looking at the map, probably not true do to several large seas and mountain ranges in the way).
Our 'inefficient cars' are because we use them to travel large distances and don't feel like doing it in a card board box thats not big enough for us to actually fit in without a leg hanging out the window. You have bullet train rides between countries that are shorter than my wifes daily drive to work. We are one of the largest countries in the world, no shit we have a big foot print. You can fit almost your entire continent in about 3 of our states combined ... out of 50. We can literally drop your entire continent in areas of the united states that no one visits and we wouldn't even notice you there until we drove through or the smell started whafting out to the rest of us. Flying in the US is still cheaper than driving longer distances, naturally, thats not surprising otherwise why would their be an airline industry? Our fuel isn't taxed to all hell and back because we have designed ourselves to be a nation that drives. Most of Europe on the other hand does its best to prevent people from driving because you simply couldn't handle all of your citizens driving. Too many old cities with small roads, too many roads that simply couldn't handle the traffic of that many cars. You are a urban population. 90% of your people live in a handful of cities so public transportation is amazingly cheap per person since its all so confined. We are not, we are a rural population. The majority of our people are scattered across the nation in little villages and towns.
In short, you have no concept of living anywhere except your little neck of the woods. You are what Europeans typically like to refer to a 'ignorant American', except replace American with European and pull that big stick of smug out of your ass cause you're just showing everyone how clueless you are.
There is no flame in your post, just ignorance. You aren't a tree loving hippie communist so much as you're just an idiot who has no concept of what life may be like outside his apartment. You are only a tree-loving hippie communist global warming conspirator in your own mind, it doesn't count when you have no choice but to do it that way because your civilization would fall apart over night if you didn't act that way. Anything Europeans do thats 'good' for the environment still doesn't make up for the damage done over the past few thousand years with your filthy cities and dumping sewage into your own water supplies.
Get off your high horse, you aren't nearly as special or bad ass as you think you are. Turns out, when it comes right down to it, people of the world are all pretty much identical, regardless of how much better than everyone else you think you are.
Re:Great... (Score:3, Insightful)
It did. There was very real input by the Republicans into it. The Democrats came up with one, then the Republicans said "I'll never vote for that, it needs XXX" and the Democrats added or took that away to give them what they wanted. This was repeated hundreds of times. The end result was something that was more palatable, but the Republicans decided they wouldn't vote for it no matter what. They supported it, they worked on it, but they didn't vote for it. That's a political posture independent of whether they worked on it.
Looking at how it fell out, they should have taken just the Democrats that voted for it, locked the doors, and come up with something stronger without the input of the people that wouldn't vote for it anyway. Some of the compromises made to appease those who would never vote for it made it the steaming pile of shit that it is. The 4-page bill that was submitted that would just make everyone eligible for Medicare would probably cost less (though I'm sure the analysts would disagree with that) and give better care than what passed, but I have no idea who would vote for it. As a plus, it wouldn't eliminate private insurance, but would just side-step it. And it's insurance that's really killing the current system, both directly and indirectly. And the bill that passed is only going to make that worse.