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."
What about UFO's (Score:5, Interesting)
In the literal sense, light aircraft not equiped with GPS, (Drug or people smugglers), and of course aircraft that have been hijacked and their transponders disabled.
Or some kid in a baloon (hoax or not, its probably not going to do an engine any good if it sucks it in...
And if the pilots are too busy playing with their laptops to even look out of the window...
It doesnt sound safe to me, especially in a post 911 world.
Didn't they delay a launch (Score:4, Interesting)
GPS (Score:2, Interesting)
1. In the UK NOTAMs ( Notice to airmen) are issued on a regular basis for GPS jamming trials. They take place over several weeks, and are, I believe, carried out by the army. I am not sure if their intention is to remove the possibility of soldiers on exercise using GPS rather than other means to navigate, or for some other reason.
I fly gliders and have a GPS unit on board which is used as a navigation aid. I also carry a chart (as required by air law) which serves as primary aid for navigation.
2. I would be pretty confident that all airliners currently in service have GPS capability
3. Radar is useful for seeing where everyone else is, GPS is for finding yourself. While transmitting location/vector information from an airbourne GPS to a ground station would enable collision avoidance, this feature is currently available through transponders. These are a requirement for any aircraft wanting to transit class A airspace.
Why not have both? (Score:3, Interesting)
WHy not have both. Redundancy is a good thing when it comes to this sort of stuff.
Security issue... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Finally Congress gets down to business (Score:5, Interesting)
Or, as Robert Heinlein once put it: once the Plebes discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses, it's all over.
Re:Satellite vulnerability (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought the radar on passenger planes is just weather radar?
e.g. it detects clouds and not other planes.
OK there's also the "going to hit the ground" detection stuff, but I don't think that's what the story is about.
The way I read it, radar won't be retired. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a little hard to tell, but one of the advantages listed is that aircraft outside areas with radar coverage will be able to transmit position information. So reading between the lines they expect to continue using radar, but replacing its role in the system with more up to date data broadcast by the aircraft.
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.
Re:Security (Score:5, Interesting)
Also while I don't think GPS is or could ever be 100% reliable, we pilots do have something called pilotage, paper charts, and good old fashioned flying that we can use to get where we're going. It isn't as cool or convenient as a big moving map on your panel, but is a tried and true way to safely navigate that folks have been using since Jeppesen invented aeronautical charting. Even if some freak solar storm blew out all of the GPS satellites, pilots aren't going to suddenly find themselves completely lost, and planes aren't going just drop out of the sky. GPS receivers and transponders fail in planes from time to time, and we have backup plans to account for that and continue on. It's really not the end of the world. In effect an aircraft could suffer entire avionics failure and still make it down just fine.
NextGen is not the end of the world, it's a much needed upgrade to a vastly outdated system. It's better than what we have now, and if it breaks there won't be airliners crashing right and left. It's OK.
My personal beef with it is the "personal electronics" thing. I use my phone to access aviation information (weather, databases, etc) and fail to see why I should stop just because a couple wankers couldn't stop playing Doom in the cockpit or whatever they were doing. Federal Aviation Regs *already* have clauses to deal with pilot stupidity, this is just extra bullshit with literally zero benefit.
Re:Great... (Score:3, Interesting)
Some things have often bothered me about the way that congress does things. Its actually reading a bit about coding design that really sunk it home. This seems to me like a top down specification of implementation rather than a specification of interface.
That is, it doesn't say "this is the goal, this is what information we need, this is what you will get". Instead its "This is how you will do it".
"This is the information you will send to the tower, this is the format it will be in, these are the tolerance specifications for how accurate and precise your instruments will be, this is the standard reference that we will use" is much simpler in the long run, because it requires less changes to the specificaion.
Why should the tower care if its GPS, Cell phone tower positioning, or star charts that produce the data? As long as its accurate to a specified reference...
of course, I do wonder.... why do they want to replace radar with GPS? Radar doesn't require an active participant on the other end. That, in and of itself, conveys certain benefits, not the least of which is not requiring much specification beyond not allowing air craft with the radar signature of small birds to be flying around.
Just my thoughts.
-Steve
GPS and altitude (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Great... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is as much about increasing airway capacity as increasing safety, over ocean there is no radar coverage so that aircraft have to be kept very well spaced, which is becoming a bottleneck on busy routes e.g. US North East to Northern Europe. With GPS you can increase density without decreasing safety. And it will probably save money in the long term - the GPS based systems are inherently cheaper, but you have to put up money in front to run both systems in parallel, and you don't get the payback until you can begin switching off radars. So it needs short term funding to cover the spending hump.
Basically, this is an unsurprising bit of good housekeeping - as shown by the vote. It was a change that would have to be made sometime, and the only real question was exactly when: costs will almost certainly fall if you delay, but that puts off the arrival of benefits as well.
Re:Security (Score:3, Interesting)
So it this no personal electronics going to effect private pilots as well? What about VFR pilots?
I know of CAP folks that have used HAM radios to help with disaster relief work? Will you be banned for plugging you mp3 player into the sound system for VFR flight?
"Before anybody freaks out listening to music while flying VFR is safer than listening to music while driving. When you are flying other planes don't honk their horns and air ambulances don't have sirens." Also any radio transmissions override the music. If you have a radio. It is legal to fly without a radio in clear weather and uncontrolled airports.
Re:Security issue... (Score:5, Interesting)
GPS, since the plane's antenna is semi-omnidirectional, is easily jammed.
The problem is, the semi-direction, as you call it, is pointed up. Most GPS satellites are up there rather than down here. And most/all jammers will be down here, where it isn't pointing. You're going to need about 20 dB more power just for that alone.
A weak signal can't interfere far away. So, just fly on for a mile, and its all good again.
A strong signal can be easily detected/pinpointed/eliminated by military ECM/ECCM aircraft.
Its unlikely a ground based jammer could be effective for more than a couple hours.
pros and cons (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm glad they passed the bill, we really need an updated system. The new stuff gives more accurate info, and (supposedly) will include very accurate weather information (for free) similar to what XM sells for something like $500/yr. Old-fashioned radar coverage works poorly in hilly / mountainous terrain, and gps navigation allows direct flight which will save time, fuel and bucks. The old-time systems are disappearing (NDBs are becoming a rare novelty - and good riddance, I say). I'm also pleased that this doesn't seem to have included 'user fees' for general aviation, which would serve as a deterrent to private flight, and make it more expensive to stay in practice, and more dangerous as a result.
Having said all that, I AM disappointed at the general direction of being tracked and my whereabouts logged with even more consistency and precision by some government entity. Big brother is smacking his lips over this, but at least THIS time we actually get some convenience for our trade off of privacy.
I live in a radar 'dead' zone, and don't have to worry about the FAA watching when occasionally buzzing a neighbor; guess I'd better enjoy it while I can.
Re:sounds risky (Score:3, Interesting)
The country doesn't have to be big. There are probably 20 countries that could, in theory, destroy GPS satellites. And they don't even have to destroy them, all they have to do is jam them from orbit. At least 10 countries have launched satellites -- not all of them countries you'd expect. Iraq launched one in the late 1980s. Many more could launch a satellite if they wished. For all we know, the Russians, Chinese, Indians, Japanese already have GPS jammers/spoofers in orbit ready to be turned on should the need ever arise.
Re:Great... (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends on whether ATC is relying on primary or secondary radar and if both are functional.
I've flown through areas where the NOTAM says "primary radar OTS", so a lost transponder means invisible. There are areas where primary radar doesn't provide as much coverage as secondary, so again, invisible.
OTOH, once primary radar shows you, than can identify you by having you turn specific directions. I don't recall if they can stick a tag on you with just primary, and you certainly won't have automatic altitude info, but they'll know who you are.
Re:93-0 margin (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's the list [senate.gov], by the way.