GPS assists FAA
- From: Sam Wormley <swormley1@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 20:06:03 GMT
June 15, 2007
New GPS wing commander
GPS assists FAA
GPS key to aviation safety
Read below the latest PNT Clips published by the Position, Navigation, and
Timing Committee related to the above mentioned subjects:
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/CORS/Newsletter/061507.doc
New Commander Takes Over GPS Wing
GPS World magazine, June 14, 2007
The U.S. Air Force said this week that Col. David W. Madden will take
over command of the GPS Wing, Space and Missile Systems Center, Air
Force Space Command at Los Angeles Air Force Base, effective Monday,
June 18.
Madden will take over as head of the U.S. Air Force group tasked with
developing and maintaining the GPS constellation and related ground
infrastructure from Col. Wesley A. Ballenger, Jr. Ballenger has
served as the GPS System Program Director and Commander for the GPS
Wing for more than four years. He is relocating to Washington, D.C.
to serve as the deputy director of Global Power Programs.
Madden has been the vice commander of the GPS Wing since July 2006.
He previously worked with the Navstar GPS Joint Program Office from
July 2001 to September 2002 as the program manager for the Combat
Survivor Evader Locator Program; the Evader Locator is a handheld
survival radio with an embedded GPS receiver.
Madden, who has an electrical engineering degree and a master's
degree in systems management, has been involved with aerospace
technology since he entered the air force in 1980. In addition to his
current duties overseeing the GPS Wing, during his military career he
has: evaluated foreign aerospace technology capabilities; chaired a
national-level intelligence community committee; developed
space-related advanced C3I systems; served as a director of
engineering; defined and documented operational requirements for the
future transformational space systems; and commanded both a space
operations squadron and a material acquisition group.
The $32 billion GPS program, with a $1 billion annual budget,
maintains the U.S. Department of Defense's (DoD) largest satellite
constellation and the largest avionics integration and installation
program in the DoD.
The Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) is the U.S. Air Force's
center for acquiring and developing military space systems. Its six
wings-of which the GPS Wing is one-and three groups are responsible
for global positioning systems, military satellite communications,
defense meteorological satellites, space launch and range systems,
the Air Force satellite control network, space-based infrared
systems, intercontinental ballistic missile systems, and space
situational awareness capabilities. SMC manages more than $60 billion
in contracts, executes annual budgets of $10 billion, and employs
more than 6,800 people worldwide.
________________________
GPS To Be Eye In The Sky For Air Traffic Control
Washington Technology, June 15, 2007
The Global Positioning System will play an increasingly important
role in the Federal Aviation Administration's plan for revamping and
expanding the antiquated U.S. air traffic control system, according
to airline industry leaders participating in an industry roundtable
this week sponsored by Raytheon.
FAA's new program will rely on Automatic Dependent
Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) technology, which uses transponders
aboard planes and GPS satellites to determine aircraft position with
much greater accuracy. "It is the surveillance technology necessary
to provide the command and the control of aircraft competing for the
limited and increasingly more restricted airspace that will be
essential to meet the growing demands of our national airspace
system," said Capt. Bart Roberts of American Airlines at the event.
"ADS-B is a critical component of the worldwide development of the
next-generational national airspace system."
Raytheon is leading one of three teams FAA has chosen as finalists to
implement the ground infrastructure for an air traffic surveillance
system that will replace the current radar-based system.
In 2005, FAA committed to using ADS-B as the backbone of its Next
Generation Air Transportation System. The agency says the system will
cost $15 billion to $22 billion by the time it is fully completed by
2025. FAA has budgeted $80 million this year for ADS-B and another
$85 million in fiscal 2008.
FAA has started using a system based on ADS-B along the Eastern
Seaboard and has conducted operational evaluations in Alaska and the
Ohio Valley. Experts say ADS-B will let pilots and air traffic
controllers determine an aircraft's position with respect to other
planes and geographic features with far greater accuracy.
The other two finalist teams are ITT and Lockheed Martin. Lockheed
Martin, which has already participated in successful ADS-B projects
with the FAA, includes Harris, Honeywell International and Sensis in
its proposal. Thales, a member of ITT's team, has successfully
implemented ADS-B technology for Australia, France and Eurocontrol.
The Raytheon-led team's plan includes XM Satellite Radio and
Verizon's commercial-communication systems to minimize costs and
provide adverse-weather updates for pilots. Experts say the ADS-B
technology will enhance a pilot's situational awareness, increase
safety, improve navigation and boost capacity.
The Air Transport Association of America, the country's oldest and
largest airline trade association, and the Aircraft Owners and Pilots
Association, which represents more than 400,000 general-aviation
aircraft owners and pilots, support using ADS-B technology. However,
commercial and general-aviation advocates disagree over how FAA
should finance the overhaul.
FAA is expected to announce the winner of the ADS-B contract later
this summer.
Ben Bain is a writer for Washington Technology's affiliate
publication, Federal Computer Week, published by the 1105 Government
Information Group.
________________________
Fantastic Flight Decks To Fly You Safely
By Chris Kjelgaard, Aviation.com Senior Editor
SPACE.com, June 15, 2007
Whether you're more used to flying in an airliner or in a private
jet, you may feel you're getting more than your share of flight
delays.
It's not just you. Delays are mounting as air traffic increases,
particularly in the United States. A big part of the problem is that
the U.S. air traffic control system is based on ground-based radar
technology that is increasingly incapable of handling the growing
volume of traffic - particularly in bad weather.
But new navigation, communication and display technologies being
installed in the flight decks of today's airliners and business
aircraft are helping solve the problem. These technologies help
pilots fly their aircraft more efficiently and safely and help
controllers keep flights on time. Radar signals degrade over
distance, so determination of an aircraft's position becomes less
reliable the further away it is. To preserve safety, controllers must
keep aircraft well apart.
The faster aircraft are flying, the further apart they must be kept.
In radar-controlled areas, aircraft cruising at the same high
altitude must be separated by 5 miles. Over oceans, where radar
coverage doesn't exist, aircraft at the same altitude are kept 50
miles apart, said FAA spokesman Paul Takemoto. Bad weather conditions
exacerbate the problem and force controllers to increase separations.
By 2025, U.S. passenger numbers will more than double from today's
740 million. "We need to transition from the ground-based radar
system," said Takemoto. "It's decades old and it's totally maxed
out."
The FAA's Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) will
use satellite communications instead of radar. By 2020 all U.S.
aircraft will be required to have equipment that uses the system.
A cornerstone of NextGen will be a technology called automatic
dependent surveillance - broadcast (ADS-B). Several times a second,
every aircraft will digitally broadcast information obtained from its
transponder regarding position, altitude, direction of movement and
the aircraft's horizontal and vertical speed. ADS-B uses two
different satellite networks. Each onboard unit determines the
aircraft's position extremely accurately using GPS satellite signals.
Then it digitally broadcasts this and other information to
telecommunications satellites to reach all other aircraft within 150
miles, as well as ground stations.
Every aircraft's instrument displays will process ADS-B information
and combine it with overlays of terrain topography and weather
conditions to produce detailed pictures of the surrounding airspace.
At the airport, ADS-B will let aircraft see and avoid each other on
runways and taxiways. Air traffic controllers and pilots will be able
to identify potential safety problems quickly and avoid them. Using
ADS-B, separations between aircraft can be reduced, airplanes will be
able to fly more direct and efficient routes and the increase in U.S.
air traffic will be accommodated.
ADS-B is already well-tested and has proved highly effective. In
Alaska, where communities rely on small aircraft for all their
transport and supply needs, ADS-B has been adopted statewide. It has
produced a 40 percent drop in Alaska's traditionally high accident
rate. UPS, a pioneer in developing ADS-B, has fitted units to 300 of
its jets so that when they converge on its Louisville, Ky. hub each
evening they maintain optimum separation and all can land on time.
Hundreds of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico are served by helicopters
but are outside radar control. The FAA and the Helicopter Association
International are working to install ADS-B ground stations on rigs to
improve safety.
Meanwhile, advances in flight-deck instruments are making air travel
safer and more reliable. The traffic alert and collision avoidance
system (TCAS) and the enhanced ground proximity warning system
(EGPWS) have become so invaluable that every country in the developed
world has now made these systems mandatory on its airliners, said
Flight Safety Foundation expert J.A. Donohue.
TCAS uses an airliner's transponder to show other aircraft in the
vicinity information about its identity, position, speed and
direction. The system alerts pilots of aircraft nearby, warns them if
another aircraft is within 30 seconds' flying time and advises a
specific avoidance maneuver if a collision becomes likely.
Two airliners collided over southern Germany on July 1, 2002.
Authorities investigating the accident found that had the captain of
one aircraft taken the avoiding action his TCAS unit advised rather
than following the controller's instruction, they wouldn't have hit
each other. One of the leading causes of airliner accidents is
controlled flight into terrain (CFIT). This occurs when pilots aren't
aware their aircraft is closer to the ground than it should be,
usually in bad visibility.
EGPWS - which compares an aircraft's GPS-derived position with a
digital topographic map to warn pilots when they are in danger of
flying into terrain - is so effective that no aircraft fitted with it
has ever had a CFIT accident, said Donohue. Other new flight-deck
technologies are reducing the numbers of delays and accidents caused
by bad weather. Modern weather radars give pilots a 20-mile offset
view that shows them how high all the clouds are around the aircraft,
allowing pilots to avoid strong convective formations.
Enhanced vision systems use infra-red imaging to let pilots see the
runway below at night and in low cloud. Synthetic vision systems -
which use digital terrain databases, like EGPWS - help pilots
complete landings in poor visibility.
"Basically the aircraft knows what it should be seeing and projects
an image of what to look for," said Donohue. "It enhances situational
awareness when you finally get through the clouds."
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