
Why 40-Year-Old Tech Is Still Running America's Air Traffic Control - ghosh
http://www.wired.com/2015/02/air-traffic-control/
======
na85
There's a lot of negativity and disdain in this thread, but something is being
overlooked: You simply can't apply "startup-style" development to something
like air traffic control. This isn't your latest javascript app where you can
push an update to fix localization bugs after the client reports an issue.

This is air traffic control, and thousands of lives are at risk every day.
This stuff _has_ to work. It has to be bulletproof.

The FAA doesn't refactor existing codebases into Haskell on a whim. A lot of
this code and the hardware it runs on has been thoroughly vetted, not to
mention battle-tested over decades of use. "Move fast and break stuff" is not
an attitude I want FAA-certified gear to be built with.

~~~
dkarapetyan
I think the negativity is warranted. There is too much bureaucratic overhead
and even it wasn't purely bureaucratic it should not take a decade to design a
resilient and fault-tolerant software/hardware system. Margaret Hamilton
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_%28scientist%...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_%28scientist%29))
might have a few things to say on the matter.

~~~
na85
When I build a tool shed in the woods in cottage/lake country, I can do things
a lot more casually than someone building a skyscraper in Manhattan can. I
probably don't even need a permit.

At no point did I say that the process behind NextGen is perfect.

~~~
dkarapetyan
What would you call sending people to the moon? A tool shed in the woods or
something else entirely? It's not like there isn't documented historical
precedent for building such complicated systems. That's what the link to
Margaret Hamilton was supposed to illuminate but I guess I should have been
more explicit.

~~~
snowwrestler
> What would you call sending people to the moon?

A huge dangerous experiment. Out of 12 Apollo missions, 2 ended in disaster.
The Apollo 1 fire killed 3 people, and we all know the story of Apollo 13. I
wouldn't call the space program an acceptable comparison for how our
commercial aviation system should work.

------
technofiend
I worked on the shuttle program for a while and was debugging some fortran
code that called honeywell assembly as part of a rewrite of the DOLILU
program. It calculated stress on the shuttles frame based on winds aloft data
collected by balloon on launch day.

The code passed in a jump parameter and the assembly jumped back to the
appropriate fortran label. Over the years, all the exits except one had been
coded out. I asked my boss if we could just make the fortran code jump
directly from point A to point B since that's all the assembly did. He
answered my 6 months contract would be done before the change made it through
committee.

The thing about process is people rarely lessen or remove it once it's in
place. But it's possible to do a classic waterfall project on time and on
budget, look at any bank release of ATM software. Of course losing an orbiter
or losing a plane isn't the same class of problem as losing a transaction, but
it is possible to do the projects properly.

The fact the Obama administration had to bring in outside help to rescue their
most recent major rollout (Obamacare insurance info websites) tells you
there's no incentive to get it right or on time in these contracts. You just
keep working and the bills keep getting paid.

These contracts need real oversight and financial penalties for failure to
meet deadlines. Assuming of course they also include some iron-clad agreements
about requirements not changing.

~~~
dasil003
I'm not saying your wrong, but shuttle software and even ATMs are different
from Obamacare. The former has specific operational requirements that are
relatively clear. Health care by contrast is a clusterfuck of legislation
piled on top a multitude of tangential legacy systems. I don't doubt that the
talent to get it right exists, but it requires more juice than just an
engineer saying "this thing won't fly". The problem is that legislation is
itself code, but it is written by people who have no nuanced knowledge of the
downstream implications, and perhaps more importantly, no incentive to ever
refactor.

~~~
dba7dba
Agree. Physics doesn't lie. But Politicians lie (or don't know what they are
talking about OR pretend to not know what they are talking about).

~~~
cmurf
Or both at the same time. They answer the question they wish you had asked.

[http://jezebel.com/male-politician-thinks-that-your-
vagina-a...](http://jezebel.com/male-politician-thinks-that-your-vagina-and-
stomach-are-1687558660)

------
ryannevius
As a pilot myself, I wouldn't be so fast to blame the FAA (as much as we
pilots don't like them at times). The FAA is using 40 year old tech for the
same reason we (especially general aviation pilots) are flying 40+ year old
planes: there used to be tons of money pouring into aviation, and now there's
not. It's prohibitively expensive to do just about anything in aviation
nowadays.

~~~
rwc
But that's in large part _because_ of the FAA. Look no further than the LSA
category, which never took off because of the onerous regulatory environment.
I think it's much more likely the 40 year old tech is a product of risk-
aversion than a lack of money pouring into aviation.

------
solutionyogi
> THE UPGRADED SYSTEM WILL GO ONLINE THIS SPRING, FIVE YEARS LATE AND AT LEAST
> $500M OVER BUDGET.

If they are over budget by half a billion, what was the original budget
number?

I completely understand that building such system is complicated, not just in
terms of technology but in mainly in terms of coordinating all the moving
pieces involved. But at no point, I can fathom how you need to spend close to
a billion dollars to implement it. As Milton Friedman famously said, you are
least careful when you are spending other's money. (i.e. Government spending
taxpayer's money)

~~~
tezzer
It takes close to half a billion dollars just to test it. Stuff has to work
right the first time, and every time after that, for 40+ years. They (and by
they I mean we) test the human factors of the displays the controllers work
at, the communications links between the ground and the air, the changing of
routes for thunderstorms or wind changes, the interoperation of communications
and navigation systems built across several decades, the algorithms for
deconflicting merging aircraft and each type of aircraft's ability to follow
the deconflicting instructions... stuff's complicated, yo.

------
cmurf
"FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE, IF YOU PURCHASE WI-FI IN COACH, YOU'RE PRETTY
MUCH BETTER OFF THAN THE PILOT."

So why does ATC not having GPS tracking make the pilot worse off? The pilot
does have GPS, and even more precision navigation in certain cases like
instrument landings.

If the FAA and the companies they keep hiring weren't so f'n sclerotic, I'd
say they need to look at a totally decentralized system that account for
autonomous drones, so all positive control flights (non-VFR) can be integrated
into the same system; but obviously starting over yet again is a great way to
just burn another $5 billion. No actually burning the cash would at least have
residual value as potash.

~~~
jrockway
NextGen gives the pilots (with "ADS-B in") the same view of the airspace that
the controllers get. Right now, they only have a limited view, via the TCAS.

~~~
cmurf
Yes, but WiFi doesn't give me the same view of the airspace the controllers
get, or pilots will eventually get. WiFi gets me something like flightware
tracking which is a lot slower and more delayed than primary/secondary radar,
TCAS or ADS-B.

My point is I think the article's author thought they were making a funny. And
it wasn't correct or funny.

------
peferron
Reminds me of 7 years back when I was working at a major power generation
company. There was a team working on restarting production of completely
obsolete analog control equipment for nuclear reactors. The operator wanted to
extend the life of their reactors by a decade or two and it just wasn't worth
it for them to have to re-certify a modern system. The existing system had
been running for decades without any serious accident, so with stakes that
high and red tape that thick, they just went for "if it ain't broke, don't fix
it". It was funny in a steampunk / Fallout kind of way.

~~~
bdamm
Seems totally reasonable, provided the system is maintained and operated
within design limits.

------
cbd1984
"If it ain't costing me money in a way I can see on a simple spreadsheet,
don't fix it."

There. That's the mature way of maintaining systems. That's how grown-ups
approach the world.

------
damian2000
One of the core components of the NextGen system, ADS-B, is already mandatory
for airlines in some countries (such Australia). Its how flightradar24 and
other sites manage to get real time info.

[http://www.flightradar24.com/about](http://www.flightradar24.com/about)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillanc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillance_%E2%80%93_broadcast#Implementations_by_country)

------
alricb
" _Lockheed Martin_ began developing the software for it in 2002"

I see your problem right there.

------
qiqing
I had worked on this a few years back, and I quit to start a startup. Sorry.
(Not sorry.)

------
dkarapetyan
The problem is that most people confuse bureaucracy with process and
structure. Those are not the same thing. It is possible to have process and
structure without bureaucracy.

------
SocksCanClose
ugh: "THE UPGRADED SYSTEM WILL GO ONLINE THIS SPRING, FIVE YEARS LATE AND AT
LEAST $500M OVER BUDGET." #

~~~
cmurf
Before Lockhead Martin's work trying to modernize, IBM had a billions dollar
contract in the 80's.

[http://sebokwiki.org/wiki/FAA_Advanced_Automation_System_%28...](http://sebokwiki.org/wiki/FAA_Advanced_Automation_System_%28AAS%29_Vignette)

[http://articles.latimes.com/1988-08-11/business/fi-288_1_air...](http://articles.latimes.com/1988-08-11/business/fi-288_1_air-
traffic-control-equipment)

Basically, none of these huge companies want to do this kind of work unless
the pay is obscene. And then once it's obscene, the companies all fight over
it and throw each other under the bus. Court battles aren't even the half of
it. They hire lobbyists, contribute to campaigns, and every 2-8 years there's
some amount of government shuffling. So nothing is actually ever very
consistent within the government. New politicians, new bureaucrats, new
policies, new ideas (they think anyway), and they basically have been
scrapping previously done work and starting over multiple times. And it's been
longer than 40 years.

Perversely, running on vacuum tubes makes the old system a more security
hardened system than what we're likely to end up with. We should hope the NSA
has hacked the FAA and ATC as a defensive measure.

------
chopealavu
There's a lot that goes into ICAO certification of telecom technologies. You
can't just use contention-based protocols, you need some sort of deterministic
bound on latency and performance and availability requirements are insane.
Different worlds with different requirements.

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chupy
Every time I see that critical systems like these are running on very old tech
I am wondering whether or not the programmers that built these a couple of
decades ago are way more capable than the ones from today.

------
pjtr
Did I miss it or do they not mention what tech it is?

Are they talking about this?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_9020](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_9020)

~~~
wglb
They did not mention it. I do believe that is the technology.

------
Osiris
The current system is 40 years old, but the new system will be almost 20 years
old by the time it's fully deployed (2020).

