Things started going wrong for the Federal Aviation Administration's En Route Automation Modernization program when contractors delivered software code to the FAA for final acceptance testing in March 2008, said Calvin Scovel, Transportation Department inspector general, while testifying Feb. 16 before a congressional panel.

ERAM is a radar-based tracking system of high altitude flights that's a key part of an air traffic control modernization effort known as NextGen; the developer was Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT). Scovel was a witness before the House Science, Space and Technology space and aeronautics subcommittee.

"It appears that an incomplete version of the product was presented to the technical center, initially," Scovel told the subcommittee. "It was lacking some of the key software code, that portion being specifically that would enable key interfaces between the test sites in Salt Lake and Seattle and other air traffic facilities." The center, in the end, "never had an opportunity to test" those interfaces, Scovel added.

Subsequent live ERAM testing in Salt Lake City revealed significant problems such as erroneous flight data tagged to aircraft and hand off difficulties between air traffic controllers, causing the FAA to place a moratorium in March 2010 on further operational testing in order to first fix more than 200 identified glitches. Testing has since resumed.

The FAA has intended ERAM to be deployed to the 20 continental U.S. air route traffic control centers by the end of 2010, but it now says the system won't achieve final operational readiness until August 2014 and will cost $330 million more than the expected price tag of $2.1 billion.

"Air traffic controllers are already using ERAM to handle traffic 24 hours a day in Salt Lake City and Seattle and testing at other facilities continues to go well," a FAA spokeswoman recently told FierceGovernmentIT.

Panel witnesses also criticized the effectiveness of the NextGen Joint Planning and Development Office.

"JPDO has not been effective recently as a long range planning office for the FAA," said R. John Hansman, chairman of the FAA research, engineering and development advisory committee and an aeronautics and astronautics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"It was effective in the initial definition of NextGen, but it's effectiveness has waned over the past years," he added. JPDO became "timid" and is too focused on designing the details of NextGen procedures rather than taking a long term view of evolving requirements, Hansman said.

Victoria Cox, FAA Air Traffic Organization senior vice president for NextGen and operations planning, said some criticism of JPDO is valid. When asked by Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) if she agrees with what other panel members said about the JPDO role, she replied "In general, yes I do."

The FAA is asking for $1.1 billion for NextGen in its fiscal 2012 budget request, $347 million more than it got in fiscal 2010. The House Appropriations Committee, in a proposed spending bill that would fund the remainder of the current fiscal year until its end on Sept. 30, proposed cutting $243 million from overall NextGen spend. The government currently operates under a temporary spending bill slated to expire on midnight of March 4.

For more:
- go to the space and aeronautics subcommittee hearing webpage

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