A key Federal Aviation Administration air traffic control modernization effort is late and could require as much as another $500 million to complete, says Transportation Department Inspector General Calvin Scovel.

In a Dec. 21 letter addressed to House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee congressmen, Scovel says the FAA has already spent $1.8 billion of a planned $2.1 billion for a radar-based tracking system of high altitude flights called En Route Automation Modernization. ERAM, primed by Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), replaces a three-decade old system called Host. The new system, which the FAA once intended to roll out nationally by the end of 2010, should allow planes to reduce their separation range down to three miles and air traffic controllers to track 1,900 planes rather than the Host maximum of a mere 1,100. ERAM is also an enabler for a slew of air traffic control modernization efforts collectively known as NextGen.

When live ERAM testing in Salt Lake City revealed significant problems, the FAA placed a moratorium in March 2010 on further operational testing in order to first fix more than 200 problems. Testing has since resumed, Scovel says, but adds that an analysis by Mitre Corp. cautions that the FAA's "initial corrective action plan was not comprehensive and that additional time and resources will be necessary." Based on Mitre and office of inspector general analysis, Scovel estimates that ERAM will require another three to six years and as much as $500 million to complete.

Such a cost escalation would affect FAA capital budget spending plans and could force the agency to redirect money intended for other modernization projects to pay for ERAM, Scovel says. Continuing problems with ERAM "will have a cascading effect on FAA's NextGen efforts." Many NextGen projects call for integration with ERAM, such as Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) and DataComm. The former is a Global Positioning System-based aircraft tracking project and the latter a two-way ground-air data communication system meant to supplement voice messages.

In addition, FAA internal documents indicate that ERAM delays will affect deployment of more agile trajectory-based operations (versus the clearance-based norm that pervades today) and a transition to a common automation platform for terminal and en route operations.

Scovel calls the ERAM problems "disconcerting," since the system had gone through testing at the FAA Technical Center and was officially accepted by the government.

For more:
- download Scovel's letter (.pdf)
- go to a FAA fact sheet on ERAM, a fact sheet on DataComm, a fact sheet on trajectory based operations, a fact sheet on ADS-B, and a fact sheet on NextGen

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