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FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION RESEARCH, ENGINEERING, AND DEVELOPMENT AUTHORIZATION
THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 1997
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Science,
Subcommittee on Technology,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met at 1:10 p.m. in room 2325 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Constance A. Morella, Chairwoman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Mrs. MORELLA. I'm going to call the meeting of the Technology Subcommittee of the Science Committee to order.
I'm certainly very pleased to welcome everyone to this afternoon's Federal Aviation Administration research, engineering and development authorization hearing. Today, this Subcommittee is going to work in a bipartisan effort to take a closer look at the FAA's research and development program and activities.
To assist in our examination, we're fortunate to have two very distinguished witnesses: Dr. George Donohue, the FAA's Associate Administrator for Research and Acquisitions--thank you very much for being here, Dr. Donohue--and Mr. Ralph Eschenbach, the new Chair of the FAA Research, Engineering and Development Advisory Committee. We had a chance to meet last night, and I'm delighted that you're here.
The Administration's Fiscal Year 1998 budget request for FAA research, engineering and development is $200 million. This represents a reduction in funding of $8.4 million from the level enacted in Fiscal Year 1997.
The RE&D program activities develop and validate new air traffic control and safety technologies that are necessary to transform our current air traffic control system into a modern air traffic management system that is capable of meeting the aviation demands of the new century. However, there have been some setbacks along the FAA's path to modernization. Over the last 15 years, several air traffic control modernization projects have experienced substantial cost overruns, lengthy schedule delays and significant performance shortfalls.
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In the past, this Subcommittee has heard from a long list of witnesses, including the General Accounting Office, that although FAA research and development has played an important part in the modernization effort, there have been numerous problems that are traceable to weaknesses in FAA's RE&D program.
In response to these concerns, the FAA has adopted a new management approach that integrates the information and technologies developed through RE&D with acquisition functions involving the participation of end users in all stages of the process.
Congress has also taken steps to increase the FAA's efficiency by enacting legislation directing the agency to develop an acquisition management system that provides for the more timely and cost-effective procurement of equipment and materials. The new system has been in effect since April 1, 1996.
I look forward to hearing from today's witnesses on the FAA's efforts in these areas, as the agency continues to increase airspace capacity, reduce inefficiencies and improve aviation safety and security.
Finally, a last matter of great interest to the Subcommittee is the FAA's implementation of the Government Performance and Results Act, the GPRA. This year, the Results Act mandates a formal consultation process between the Congress, the FAA and its stakeholders on development of the Agency's strategic plan.
The Speaker, Senate Majority Leader, and other members of the Congressional leadership have recently written to OMB Director Raines detailing the expectations for this formal consultative process. Chairman Sensenbrenner and Congressman Brown are following up with a joint letter to the head of each civilian science agency under the Committee's jurisdiction outlining these expectations for these consultations, including a time schedule with that.
We look forward to working with the FAA on the new, outcome-based planning and budgeting that is mandated by the Results Act.
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I also want to recognize our new Ranking Member. I look forward to working with him in a bipartisan way, as we have on many other issues--Mr. Bart Gordon of Tennessee. I'll turn to him and recognize him for his opening remarks.
Mr. GORDON. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
I want to join you and welcome everyone, and echo your sincere interest in working together. I know that we will. This is an important issue, and I look forward to being a part of your team.
Aviation continues to draw the persistent scrutiny of Congress, and few enterprises are subject to greater federal involvement. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics was created in 1915, and in 1958 the Federal Aviation Act established the Federal Aviation Agency.
Today the FAA has grown to almost 50,000 employees, and manages a research budget of more than half a billion dollars. The result of this federal investment has been impressive. The FAA has built a system unsurpassed in both safety and efficiency in the world.
FAA now faces the challenge to develop and to deploy new technologies in order to meet its responsibilities for the management and operation of a changing national aeroscience system. FAA's research and development program will be key to increasing the capacity and efficiency of the aerospace system, while insuring its safety and security.
I'm concerned about the continuing decline, though, in the FAA's R&D activities. The Fiscal Year 1998 research, engineering and development request is 4 percent below the Fiscal Year 1997 appropriations, and represents a 23 percent decrease from Fiscal Year 1995 levels.
This trend is compounded by a 19 percent decrease in the Fiscal Year 1998 funding for R&D-related activities in the facilities and equipment account, which is now more than 43 percent below the Fiscal Year 1995 appropriations levels.
During today's hearings, I hope we can address the following four issues. One, are FAA's R&D resources adequate to modernize the air traffic control system, and are they consistent with the Gore Commission recommendations?
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I see you're writing, so I'll take a moment here. That's a good sign. My professors always liked to see me pick up a pencil.
Is FAA strengthening the role of the RE&D Advisory Committee in setting up its priorities in accordance with the FAA Authorization Act, passed last year?
Why the FAA cannot send to Congress a 5-year national aviation research plan detailing priorities and outlining funding levels, in accordance with statutory requirements; and the reason for splitting the R&D budget between two accounts at FAA.
Chairwoman Morella and I are in agreement on strengthening research and development at FAA. I look forward to working with her to develop authorization legislation for the FAA's R&D program, and I want to thank our witnesses for taking the time to join us today.
Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you, Mr. Gordon.
Were you ever a college professor? I noticed you enumerated and gave time for taking notes.
Mr. GORDON. For a short time.
Mrs. MORELLA. I guess we all are.
I want to welcome our two witnesses to this hearing. Testifying first will be Dr. George Donohue, who has been an active participant in this Subcommittee's review of our Nation's aviation research and development initiatives.
Dr. Donohue is the FAA's Associate Administrator for Research and Acquisitions, and he's held this position since 1994, and will present the President's aviation research and development priorities.
As we enacted the research and development title of the FAA Reauthorization Act in the previous Congress, we're able to count on Dr. Donohue's broad experience in managing research and technology projects in the public and private sectors, and in shaping that legislation. I look forward to continuing to work with him to ensure that our Nation continues to maintain our aviation technology preeminence for our international competitiveness, and the safety of all of our air passengers.
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Following Dr. Donohue's presentation, our second witness is Ralph Eschenbach, who is the new Chairman of the FAA RE&D Advisory Committee, and also the Vice President and Chief Technical Officer of Trimble Navigation.
This Committee originally created the advisory board, and we envisioned it as a resource in the development of new aviation research initiatives. Additionally, in the recently enacted RE&D title in the FAA Reauthorization Act of 1996, we strengthened the advisory board's role. I believe the Advisory Committee is a valuable tool for the FAA, and the FAA needs to effectively utilize its experience. So I look forward to your testimony, too, Mr. Eschenbach.
Dr. Donohue, why don't you start off?
STATEMENT OF DR. GEORGE L. DONOHUE, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR RESEARCH AND ACQUISITIONS, FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION
Mr. DONOHUE. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, Mr. Gordon, staff.
We appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the FAA's research, engineering and development program. I'd like to highlight for you some of the changes we have made in response to recent legislation, and also briefly discuss our role in responding to the recommendations of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, sometimes referred to as the Gore Commission.
Let me begin by reporting on actions we have taken in response to the FAA Reauthorization Act of 1996. At this Committee's initiative, several important changes were included in the Act that affect the FAA's RE&D program.
These changes enhance, first, the role of the RE&D Advisory Committee in reviewing our research programs. Also, secondly, improve the way in which our national aviation research plan is developed and presented.
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First of all, as directed by the 1996 Reauthorization Act, we have made sure that the R&D Advisory Committee is more closely involved in assessing our priorities. For our Fiscal Year 1998 RE&D programs, the Advisory Committee met last year to review our plans, and provided its views. Its recommendations were considered in our allocation resource process to the specific programs reviewed.
For the Fiscal Year 1999 programs, we plan to increase the Advisory Committee's role by using six standing Subcommittees, and regularly scheduled meetings of those Subcommittees with our staff, to solicit the Committee's recommendations throughout the period when our investment priorities are developed. This should further heighten the Advisory Committee's valuable oversight of our plans.
In my view, a principal strength of the FAA's RE&D program is the expertise and commitment of the members of this Committee. Our enhanced use of the Advisory Committee is in direct response to this Subcommittee's concerns, and we appreciate your attention and engagement on this matter.
Another area of change in the RE&D process concerns our National Aviation Research Plan. That was completed and submitted on time to this Committee. It included the changes called for in the 1996 Reauthorization Act.
For example, we reduced the scope of the plan from 15 years to 5 years. We clearly showed the allocation of resources between long-term and near-term research projects, and we described the way we assigned priorities among competing RE&D projects.
We now highlight in the plan RE&D activities that stem from Advisory Committee recommendations, and include our responses to those recommendations. We are grateful both to the Advisory Committee and to this Subcommittee for their assistance in substantially improving our R&D plan, and the process by which we put it together.
I would also like to address today some of the personnel and acquisition reforms that were initiated under the Fiscal Year 1996 Department of Transportation Appropriations Act. Although I will focus primarily on acquisition reform, which is my primary responsibility, I would like to note that we have done some things in the area of personnel reform where we're much more in a formative stage.
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We have recently hired a new chief scientist and technical advisor for our technical center, Dr. Herman Rudis. I'd actually like these individuals to stand while I introduce them.
Also, we have a new chief scientist for software engineering, Dr. Art Pfeister; and a new chief scientist for human factors, Dr. Maureen Pettit. All these individuals came to us from outside the U.S. government, and had distinguished careers in either academia or the private sector.
Our new acquisition management system, which took effect April 1 of last year, provides a simplified and more flexible way to meet our acquisition needs. Crucial to this process is a partnership between our customers, users and industry, which covers the entire life cycle of the equipment from the time when the systems are conceived to the time they are taken out of service.
Our approach has been to bring together all the key players from the very beginning of the process through the use of Integrated Product Teams. We are committed to ensuring that these initiatives stay on course, and we will keep a close eye on our progress, using both in-house evaluations and independent assessments.
Indications thus far are that the new systems are working well to help the FAA field critical equipment within budget and on schedule to meet our customers' needs. I will note that a critical piece of equipment at five centers, what we call the DCCR--Display Channel Complex Rehost--was completed 8 months ahead of schedule and under cost.
And so, we're proud to say that we think the processes we're putting in place are already showing clear results.
Another important example was in our STARS program. Last year, we awarded a $1 billion contract for the Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System, which we call STARS. STARS is designed to replace aging computers at over 170 terminal radar control facilities, and pave the way for future upgrades that will allow the system to handle increased traffic safely and more efficiently.
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Under the old system, a contract of this size would have typically taken up to 18 months or longer from the time of request for proposal to contract award. In this case, however, we awarded the contract in 6 months. We saved 12 months out of a typical process.
The IPT used its precompetition screening ability to eliminate unqualified bidders early in the process. And of the bidders that we downselected to, which had extremely qualified products, we were able to test those products prior to giving an award with a substantial amount of testing.
This greatly cut the time needed for the contract award, and also greatly reduced the risk of the subsequent development that's still required. We saved time because virtually all of the hardware in the system, and most of the software, were commercial off-the-shelf products, not items developed specifically for this contract.
I'm happy to report that none of the losing STARS contractors filed a protest, which is unlike what we would have expected under the old system.
In addition to reporting on actions we had taken in response to legislative changes, I would like to touch briefly on the recommendations of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, which recently issued its final report.
The Commission issued a wide range of recommendations that cover safety, air traffic control, airspace modernization, security and financial issues. Some of the recommendations affect virtually the entire agency, such as the principal goal of reducing the fatal accident rate by a factor of 5 over the next 10 years.
Another broad-based recommendation is to advance the time line for modernizing the national airspace system, or the NAS, as we call it.
These recommendations, as well as others coming from human factors research and security technology, all will involve our future R&D programs that we will be putting together. We are now working quickly within the FAA to develop pertinent cost and resource information, as well as schedules and priorities, to determine how best to achieve the needed results called for by that Commission.
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One of our primary challenges will be the Commission's recommendation that we develop within 6 months a revised NAS plan that will accelerate the modernization schedule. I think we can all agree with the statement in the Commission's report that modernization of our aging airspace system is critical to the safety of the traveling public and to maintaining our world leadership in aviation, and our economic interest.
One of the main issues to be considered in airspace modernization, as the Commission also noted, is the availability of non-traditional means of financing capital improvements. Although flexibility we have been given in the areas of personnel and acquisition reform has been very helpful, meaningful financial reform will be essential to our success.
Another concern I have about the modernized airspace system is making sure that the new systems are demonstrated working together under real operating conditions for evaluation before we have systemwide acquisition training and deployment. The goal that we are talking about moving to is called free flight, and in the human factors area in the past, we have found that great increases in safety accrued from working in the cockpit for what we call cockpit resource management, having the pilot and the copilot working together as a team.
The system that we're moving to early in the 21st Century is going to require a similar sort of coordinated activity between the pilot and the air traffic controller, and doing the human factors research on that interaction is going to be extremely important. But by doing the research and the full-scale demonstration of this capability, we'll significantly reduce the learning curve and ease the way for a faster and smoother transition to the new, modernized system.
Finally, I would note that achieving the full benefits of modernization will require a significant additional private investment in avionics for up to 200,000 aircraft to fly in our system. We are looking for ways to reduce those costs. This is going to be a critical element of our ability to modernize.
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In closing, I would like to assure the members of this Subcommittee that we are working in partnership with government agencies, including especially NASA and the Department of Defense, as well as with research institutions and others, to leverage scarce R&D funds, and also to gain access to the expertise in specialized areas of technology.
We now have over 250 agreements for R&D partnerships with research organizations, foreign governments, and industry consortia. We have also established university-based centers of excellence for research.
I would like to assure you that we consider this Subcommittee an important partner in helping us meet the challenges facing all of us as we work to modernize the national airspace system to meet the aviation needs of the next century.
This concludes my prepared statement.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Donohue follows:]
STATEMENT OF GEORGE L. DONOHUE, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR RESEARCH AND ACQUISITIONS, FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION, BEFORE THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, CONCERNING THE FISCAL YEAR 1998 RESEARCH, ENGINEERING AND DEVELOPMENT AUTHORIZATION
MARCH 13, 1997
Chairwoman Morella and Members of the Subcommittee:
I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the FAA's research, engineering and development (R,E&D) program. I would like to highlight for you some changes we have made in response to recent legislation, and also briefly discuss our role in responding to recommendations of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security.
Let me begin by reporting on actions we have taken in response to the Federal Aviation Reauthorization Act of 1996. At this Committee's initiative, several important changes were included in the Act that affect the FAA's R,E&D program. These changes enhance the role of the R,E&D Advisory Committee in reviewing our research programs, and also improve the way our National Aviation Research plan is developed and presented.
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First of all, as directed by the 1996 Reauthorization Act, we have made sure the R,E&D Advisory Committee is more closely involved in assessing our priorities. For our Fiscal Year 98 R,E&D programs, the Advisory Committee met last year to review our plans and provided its views. Its recommendations were considered in our allocation of resources to specific programs.
For the Fiscal Year 99 program, we plan to increase the Advisory Committee's role by using six standing subcommittees and regularly scheduled meetings to solicit the Committee's recommendations throughout the period when our investment priorities are developed. This should further heighten the Advisory Committee's valuable oversight of our plans. In my view, a principal strength of the FAA's R,E&;D program is the expertise and commitment of the members of this Committee. Our enhanced use of the Advisory Committee is in direct response to this Subcommittee's concerns, and we appreciate your attention and encouragement in this area.
Another major area of change in the R,E&D program concerns our National Aviation Research Plan. The 1997 R,E&D Plan, which we delivered to the Subcommittee last month--on time, I am happy to report--included changes called for in the 1996 Reauthorization Act. For example, we reduced the scope of the plan from 15 years to 5 years, clearly showed the allocation of resources between long-term and near-term research projects, and described the way we assign priorities among competing R,E&D projects. We now highlight in the plan R,E&D activities that stem from Advisory Committee recommendations, and include our responses to those recommendations. We are grateful both to the Advisory Committee, and to this Subcommittee, for their assistance in substantially improving our R,E&D plan.
I would also like to address today the personnel and acquisition reforms initiated under the Fiscal Year 96 Department of Transportation Appropriations Act. Although I will focus primarily on acquisition reform, I would like to note that we recently hired a new Chief Scientist and Technical Advisor for our Technical Center, and new Chief Scientists for Software Engineering and Human Factors.
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Our new acquisition management system, which took effect April 1 of last year, provides a simplified, more flexible way to meet our acquisition needs. Crucial to this process is a partnership between customers, users and industry which covers the entire life cycle of the equipment, from the time when systems are conceived to the time they are taken out of service. Our approach has been to bring together all these key players from the very beginning of the process through the use of integrated product teams (IPT).
We are committed to ensuring that these initiatives stay on course, and will keep a close eye on their progress using both in-house evaluations and independent assessments. Indications thus far are that the new systems are working well to help the FAA field critical equipment within budget and on schedule to meet our customers' needs.
For example, last year we awarded a $1 billion contract for the Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System, or STARS. STARS is designed to replace aging computers at over 170 Terminal Radar Control facilities and pave the way for future upgrades that will allow the system to handle increased traffic safely and more efficiently.
Under the old system, a contract of this size would have typically taken up to 18 months from the time of request for proposal to contract award. In this case, however, we awarded the contract in just 6 months. The IPT used its pre-competition screening ability to eliminate unqualified bidders early in the process, which substantially cut the time needed for contract award. We also saved time because virtually all of the hardware, and most of the software, were commercial off-the-shelf products, not items developed specifically for this contract. I am happy to report that none of the losing STARS contractors filed a protest, which is unlike what we would have expected under the old system.
In addition to reporting on actions we have taken in response to legislative changes, I would like to touch briefly on the recommendations of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, which recently issued its final report. The Commission issued a wide range of recommendations that cover safety, air traffic control, airspace modernization, security and financial issues. Some of the recommendations affect virtually the entire agency, such as the principal goal of reducing the fatal accident rate by a factor of five over the next years. Another broad-based recommendation is to advance the timeline for modernizing the National Airspace System (NAS). These recommendations, as well as others concerning human factors research and security technology, for example, will involve the R,E&D program. We are now working quickly within the FAA to develop pertinent cost and resource information, as well as schedules and priorities, to determine how best to achieve the needed results.
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One of our primary challenges will be the Commission's recommendation that we develop within six months a revised NAS plan that will accelerate the modernization schedule. I think we can all agree with the statement in the Commission's report that ''modernization of our aging airspace system is critical to the safety of the traveling public, to maintaining our world leadership in aviation, and to our economic interests.'' One of the main issues to be considered in airspace modernization, as the Commission also noted, is the availability of non-traditional means of financing capital improvements. Although the flexibility we have been given in the areas of personnel and acquisitions reform has been helpful, meaningful financial reform will be essential to our success.
Another concern I have about the modernized airspace system is making sure that new systems are demonstrated working together, under real operating conditions, for evaluation before we have systemwide acquisitions, training and deployment. This will significantly reduce the learning curve and ease the way for a faster and smoother transition to the new modernized system. Finally, I would note that achieving the full benefits of modernization will require significant additional private investment in avionics, and we are looking at ways to reduce those costs.
In closing, I would like to assure the Members of this Subcommittee that we are working in partnership with government agencies, including especially NASA and the Department of Defense, as well as with research institutions and others to leverage scarce R&D funds, and to gain access to expertise in specialized areas of technology. We now have over 250 agreements for R&D partnerships with research organizations, foreign governments, and industry consortia We have also established university-based Centers of Excellence for research. I would like to assure you that we consider this Subcommittee an important partner in helping us meet the challenges facing all of us as we work to modernize the National Airspace System to meet the aviation needs of the next century.
That concludes my prepared statement. I would be pleased to respond to questions you may have at this time.
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Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you, Dr. Donohue. You did a very thorough explanation of the progress since we last had you before us.
Before we turn to Mr. Eschenbach, let me just recognize the three members who are here. To your right, Dr. Vern Ehlers, who is from Michigan; and to your left we have Ms. Debbie Stabenow from Michigan; Ms. Lynn Rivers from Michigan--I don't know what's happening here.
[Laughter.]
Mrs. MORELLA. I mean, it's incredible.
Mr. Eschenbach?
STATEMENT OF RALPH ESCHENBACH, CHAIR, RESEARCH, ENGINEERING AND DEVELOPMENT ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Mr. ESCHENBACH. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, members of the Committee. Thank you for inviting me here. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today.
I have been employed with Trimble Navigation since 1983, and in several capacities. I'm currently the Vice President and Chief Technical Officer for the company. During that time, I spent 4 years managing Trimble's avionics division, and I have been a private pilot for over 30 years and have about 3,000 hours of flying time. So I've been a user of the system as well.
I'm also on the board of directors of several small, high-tech companies not associated with aviation. Today, however, I'm testifying as Chairman of the FAA's RE&D Advisory Committee, a position that I've held for all of 2 months. As a member of the Committee, however, for the prior 2 years, I have observed the FAA staff and participated in the Committee operation.
There are three key points that I'd like to emphasize in my opening remarks today. The first is that the FAA staff has been very supportive. I have found them to be very helpful and very cooperative in getting us any and all information that we've needed.
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Likewise, they have been very receptive to the suggestions and recommendations that we have made on their efforts. In fact, over the last 2 years, I have noticed an increasing desire to have our involvement and the receptivity of our input, and I know now that that's thanks to this Committee.
The second point I'd like to make is that the NAS modernization must be sped up. I feel that the task of modernizing the NAS by 2005, as recommended by the Gore Commission, will be, however, extremely difficult if not impossible with the current architectural plan and the current level of funding.
We, too, in our NAS R&D Subcommittee report, are recommending increased emphasis on expediting this NAS transition. As we stated there, quote, ''In order to move forward, the FAA must take a leadership role in translating the goals of free flight into a coherent plan of evolution of the NAS, both in its architecture and in its concept of operation.''
The R&D should first support the development of a NAS evolution plan; i.e., to resolve specific technical and operational issues. And second, support the execution of the plan in a manner which will build sufficient stakeholder confidence to make the commitments necessary for this successful evolution.
Today, the lack of an operational concept is currently hampering the development of this plan. And until there is widespread stakeholder buy-in to this concept, we will not get coordinated industry-government effort toward the rapid implementation of this plan.
We have made several management recommendations to expedite this process. We are very supportive of the collaborative efforts the FAA has made to work with other government organizations, especially with NASA, to coordinate joint R&D programs which support domestic and international air traffic management activities.
As the NAS becomes more and more dependent on information and information technology, we also need to find better methods for certifying safety-critical systems that contain COTS--that's commercial off-the-shelf--software. In fact, certification in general is a very accepted component of moving to these new technologies. We must make improvements in the certification process to address the rapid advances in technology.
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The last point that I would like to make is that prototypes are crucial to rapid implementation. One of the critical components necessary for injecting new technology into a market is the ability to prototype and test those components. Modeling and simulation are very important, but we can only go so far in answering questions of implementation, especially when a safe and reliable system must be maintained during this process.
The FLIGHT 2000 demonstration program in Alaska and Hawaii is exactly such a prototype, affecting just 1 percent of the airplanes in the NAS, but providing much-needed answers to questions of operation and implementation. Only with government-industry cooperation, adequate funding, and sufficient prototyping will we have a chance of meeting our 2005 date.
In summary, the FAA has been very supportive in facilitating the Committee's work, and they have been very receptive to our recommendations and comments. The NAS modernization must be expedited, and the FLIGHT 2000 project and other prototype projects will be necessary for such success.
Thank you, Madam Chairwoman and Committee. I'll be glad to take any questions.
Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you, Mr. Eschenbach.
I also will recognize a new Congressman, Chris Cannon from Utah.
I would ask this question to Dr. Donohue, and then it will be directed to you, Mr. Eschenbach.
The Gore Commission that you mentioned, on aviation safety and security, has recommended that the FAA accelerate its modernization of the air traffic control system by 7 years. In your testimony, you mention that it's imperative that all components of the national airspace system are demonstrated and evaluated working together before proceeding with systemwide acquisition and deployment.
So I guess the questions would be, are the key technologies mature enough to allow the FAA to make the investment decisions that are necessary to implement their recommendation? And then, how will accelerating air traffic control modernization impact the RE&D program?
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Mr. DONOHUE. Those are excellent questions, Madam Chairwoman.
First of all, I believe that the key technologies are in fact mature enough that the modernization of the NAS system that's required is basically not a technological issue. We have--in fact, if you look at our current plan in the NAS architecture, this is one volume of a four-volume set. And you look at our planned time line for installing that system, 90 percent of that system was already planned to be in place by the year 2005.
All of the ground-based computers would have been replaced by that time. All of the ground-based local area nets and wide area nets will be in place. All the new switches will be in place. Many of those, not all, are starting to be installed.
So it's going to take about 3 to 4 to 5 years for some of these systems just to be installed over 170 different sites. But that time line is very much in sync with the White House's recommendation.
The areas in which we were not in sync are in the areas of communication modernization and surveillance modernization, and due to out-year budget projections that we were working with, we were having difficulty being able to do all of those things at the same time. It was not a question of was the technology ready. It was a question of, did we have the financing ability to make those installations.
The Gore Commission did recognize that, in order to achieve the 2005 date, that the ability to fund the system had to be resolved. And that's one of the things that this national commission that was generated by the Congress last year must wrestle with over the next several months, is how do we find the capital to be able to install that equipment.
As far as the total integrated end-to-end test, which I testified to, I believe that we can do that by the year 2000 in Hawaii and Alaska. The reason we can do that is because it's relatively austere airspace, and the amount of equipment that is needed to put this in is financially affordable.
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One of the big problems in trying to modernize from the system we had to the one we're going to is, not only does the FAA system, which is largely ground or satellite-based--not only does it have to change, but equipment in every cockpit that flies in controlled airspace also has to change. And to get an ability to test the system where the aircraft have the new, modern avionics as well as the FAA having the electronics that we have, is something that is one of our economic hurdles for a more rapid modernization.
In the airspace in Alaska and Hawaii, there is a relatively small number of aircraft, which we will be proposing in the 1999 budget--probably in the R&D account--that we work with in buying a small number of avionics for those aircraft so we can conduct these end-to-end tests. We will be putting together, as we're putting our 1999 budget together, an understanding of how much that's going to cost and how it will affect outyear budgets.
Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Eschenbach.
Mr. ESCHENBACH. First, I'd like to just agree with Dr. Donohue. In my opinion, the technologies are certainly mature enough. It is not an issue of what do we have to invent to be able to implement the NAS modernization. The issue is simply, do we have an operational concept that we can develop to, and a financial issue of the cost to implement the system.
With the advent of GPS, we have a capability that allows huge steps forward. And it's really an implementation issue, not a technology issue.
In terms of the R&D impact, I think there are some impacts that will need to get looked at fairly extensively to effect this implementation. One of them is the whole area of certification, which I mentioned a little bit earlier. When you put all this equipment into airplanes, it has to be certified equipment, and we need to make certain that it's obviously safe.
But we also need to do it in an expedited manner, and in a prototype manner, such that we can test out some of these concepts that we still are working with.
The second area, which Dr. Donohue mentioned as well, is the area of human factors, and I think that will take an increased emphasis with this modernization system, the system that we're moving toward. With free flight, we have a change in where sort of the center of command is between the cockpit and the ground, and that relationship needs to be understood and worked out so that it can be handled in a flawless manner.
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So those areas I think are the ones that have the principal R&D impact.
The last comment is just that, with getting this equipment into airplanes, the funding of that, one of the things that needs to be done is a structure imposed such that airplanes are rewarded for putting this equipment in; i.e., they get better access for better handling, or more efficient processing, so they are in fact incented to install some of this modern equipment.
Mrs. MORELLA. At some other point, we'll get into how we might reward them.
But, you know, as I was looking at the budget that was submitted by the President, I found some areas where there seems to be some major inconsistencies with the Gore Commission, and last year the budget--I noticed that one of the areas is weather.
It seems it's the single largest contributor to delays. It is a major factor in all major accidents, aircraft accidents, and congressional support for the weather RE&D program, I think, is strong.
And in addition, the National Academy of Sciences has urged the FAA to adequately fund and assure more of a leadership role in this area.
The Fiscal Year 1998 budget request proposes a 37 percent reduction for the weather program. So I wonder, Mr. Eschenbach, whether or not the Advisory Committee made any recommendations about the prioritization--if that's a word I can use--of the weather program.
Mr. ESCHENBACH. Good question.
Yes, we have included quite a few comments on the weather activities in the report that is just being released. I don't know if it's out yet. I don't know if it's quite out yet. We have to get a couple more votes to get the full Committee's approval of it. But in reviewing the drafts of that, it has quite a few recommendations in the weather area.
You're absolutely correct that weather has a substantial impact, not only on fatalities and accidents, but also on delays. And we have recommended putting some increased emphasis on some of the weather forecasting, especially the short-term weather forecasting activities, the 20 minutes to 1-hour kind of forecast that will allow us to accurately predict when an airport is going to be shut down, and accurately predict when it will be able to be opened up again.
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So those are areas that, in fact, we have put some increased emphasis on.
Mrs. MORELLA. I'd like to then get Dr. Donohue's--you knew I was going to ask your response on that, because they seem counterproductive to aviation safety.
Mr. DONOHUE. Madam Chairwoman, I agree with all of the recommendations on the importance of weather. I am also a private pilot and fly in the system. And probably one of my biggest concerns is separating my aircraft from convective weather.
We have, as you know, as the Committee is aware, very tight budgets that we must work within. And we have many issues that we must be trying to address. We try to balance our program as well as we can between our time phasing, between our research efforts and our full-scale development or acquisition and installation operation efforts.
We have currently some backlog of very good technology, which we are not providing to the weather users today. We're putting a major amount of our weather money in our F&E program, in programs such as ITWS, the Integrated Terminal Weather System, into our weather radar processor program, and to our ASOS program, which is an autonomous weather sensor program; I think probably on the order of $100 million a year.
In weather systems we are working to display the NEXRAD weather radars in our display system. That goes to en route sensors to be able to integrate all of the terminal sensors in a very advanced way to provide short-term predictions of convective weather, up to 20 to 30 minutes in advance around high-capacity airports--a major breakthrough, I think, in weather forecasting on the micro scale.
And also, to be able to replace a large number of weather observers that the National Weather Service used to provide to the FAA that, because of their budget reductions, they cannot provide to us any more. In order to be able to have Instrument Landing Systems at many of our smaller airports, we are putting a lot of money there.
So it is not the fact that we do not appreciate the importance, the critical importance, of weather. It is trying to balance both our budget, a time sequencing of whether we have technology ready to push forward versus the systems in place to be able to accept that technology so we can get it to the pilots.
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Mrs. MORELLA. So this was your rationale when you consulted with Mr. Raines, or whoever helped put the budget together.
Mr. DONOHUE. Yes. As we put the budget together, we looked at our operational needs, our technical needs, and the safety impacts in many different areas. Weather is certainly one of those.
We tried to look at the time phasing, from the output of research to the input of our acquisition program, to the fielding and training. This is an extremely complex flow of technology that we have to manage going through the system, and balance that within what are still fairly austere budgetary guidelines. And we do the best we can to come up with the right appropriation.
Mrs. MORELLA. So you're the one we can blame?
Mr. DONOHUE. Yes, ma'am.
Mrs. MORELLA. I'd now like to recognize our Ranking Member, Mr. Gordon, for questioning. We're going to have a chance to go back for a second round.
Mr. GORDON. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
I'll also introduce Jim Barcia, who has joined us. As you might expect, he's from Michigan.
[Laughter.]
Mr. GORDON. Also, our new Ranking Member on the Basic Research Subcommittee. We say that, Jim, because Michigan has a quorum here today.
The FAA is required to submit to Congress annually at the time of the President's budget request the national aviation research plan. Past experience has been that examples of the plan have mostly been a compendium of detailed descriptions of current projects, rather than an investment plan for the major R&D areas of activity, including a clear discussion of priorities among major areas, and the rationale for those priorities.
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Information on priorities has also been incomplete due to the lack of funding projections, even though funding projections are called for by the statute for a 5-year period.
Also, the plan includes only activities within the RE&D budget, whereas the statute specifies that it should cover all R&D activities.
So my question is, I guess--first I should say, can you explain why this seems to be the situation--or correct me if the information is wrong--and how you go about establishing those priorities. And can we expect this 5-year plan in the future?
Mr. DONOHUE. Well, Mr. Gordon, yes. I'll assume that question is to me.
[Laughter.]
Mr. DONOHUE. Although maybe I'd like to have Ralph answer it.
We have been constantly--in the last 2 and a half years, I have been at the FAA working to try to improve the quality of our research plan, as well as our Capital Investment Plan, and to develop a NAS architecture. Three of those plans--which are published now, and will be published annually; the NAS architecture perhaps not every year, because we shouldn't change that much--do provide a long-range projection within our architecture, even the budget estimates that go along with providing those systems.
The Capital Investment Plan does not have budget information in it, because of traditional guidance for out-year budgets. But we do have budget estimates in our NAS architecture that are not official White House budget requests. But they are at best estimates of what financing is required for those elements.
The NAS architecture is still evolving, as we are trying to find out how to both modernize and do that in a way that we can afford it. It's a very difficult engineering job to do that.
We are doing, I think, a better job every year in the way in which we put our rationalization together for our R&D plan, and the way in which we prioritize those elements. We are making a very major effort for our Fiscal Year 1999 research plan, which is underway right now, in addressing all the issues you mentioned very specifically, with very clear rationale and prioritization.
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I think that the 1998 plan is the best that we've ever done, but I think there is still room for improvement. So there's a process of getting our culture to change, which are difficult things to do, and to learning how to do a better and better job of that, and how to do our prioritization.
Mr. GORDON. Do you think next year that, when we're talking about this, you will be following the law and that we can expect that 5-year plan?
Mr. DONOHUE. We can provide to the Department all the information actually for much more than 5 years. And we're following the Department guidance as we submit data to Congress.
Mr. GORDON. I think it would be helpful to all of us if that could be improved. I won't belabor that.
Also, the statute establishes the requirement for the plan to specify that it should cover all FAA's R&D activities, not just those included under the RE&D budget account. Can you tell me why that's the situation there?
Mr. DONOHUE. Well, we have as you know two different appropriations; one in the RE&D account, and one which is in our Facilities and Equipment account.
It is always a little bit of a judgment call of exactly where in the transition phase something should be funded under R&D versus what should be funded under F&E. That was more of a problem 3 years ago than it is right now, quite frankly.
Today I would say that we have very clearly emphasized in our RE&D request for authorization elements that are much more in either basic research, which we don't do much of, quite frankly, or applied research only.
For us, development is increasingly becoming a small addition of technology to commercial, off-the-shelf items. Therefore, they're very closely tied to large expenditures of money which are very much on the procurement side.
You manage those two accounts in very different ways. On the Defense Department side, they talk about Part 6 money, which is the research through development activities, and they divide that into six elements--6.1, 6.2, 6.3--which the Committee may be familiar with. And I have worked for many years on Defense Department research and development.
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You have a different fundamental way in which you look at how you work in either exploratory research, basic research--how you manage that, how you keep track, what your outcome measures are--which has a degree of fluidity to it which is required. As you get into the acquisition side, which also has obviously some full-scale development aspects to that, money is much larger. It is very structured. It has to be managed in a much different way.
And I inherited a tradition of these accounts being in two different appropriations. But we do actually manage them in a very different way. So I think it's not inappropriate for us to have an RE&D account which is very much in the exploratory research or very early phases of looking at, ''Are we ready for development;'' versus the F&E account, which is very much more toward, ''We've got to go towards full-scale production and deployment.''
Mr. GORDON. As you might understand, this Committee is concerned about exercising authorizing authority and oversight there.
Mr. DONOHUE. I do understand that.
Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you, Mr. Gordon.
I wanted to also recognize the Vice-Chair of this Technology Subcommittee, Mr. Gil Gutknecht, who is here.
Now I want to recognize for questioning Mr. Ehlers.
Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
My questions are fairly simple. A couple of specific ones first.
You worried, Mr. Donohue, in your comments about the avionics costs. Won't all those additional costs be recovered fairly quickly through fuel savings in the new system?
Mr. DONOHUE. Yes and no.
For the commercial carriers, we estimate--it depends also on what kind of operation they have. In the oceanic environment, which are very long-haul, very fuel-intensive, we estimate return on investment in less than 18 months for the avionics, which satisfies the economic hurdle rate for the major long-haul carriers.
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We also see about the same return on investment in the high-altitude, long-haul domestic airspace. I have recently seen some economic data from the regional airlines who might fly, typically, 200- to 300-nautical-mile legs. But they even feel that they can reduce their operating costs on the order of 12 percent per year, which should give them an adequate return on investment to equip.
Of course, they have smaller cash flows, so you have to look at the specific costs of the avionics in each one of those segments.
The area where we don't, or the system does not, generate an economic return on investment is in the general aviation area. So if you look at commercial aircraft, you're talking about on the order of 10,000 airplanes who work in the system.
There are 200,000 airplanes that are registered in the United States. Of that, probably 150,000 fly in controlled airspace, and require avionics. The other 140,000 aircraft are either high-end GA, which probably can afford avionics for the convenience of their owners, or low-end general aviation that get no economic income for their flying opportunities, but do inhabit the same airspace.
In order to have a safe system, the aircraft that are co-mixing must have a common avionics set. They must provide benefits to the pilot in the area of safety information, cockpit display of traffic information, weather data, updates to their geographic data bases, to provide an impetus to want to have that equipment in their aircraft.
But we must get the cost down to something that is affordable. Our estimate here is on the order of $5- to $10,000 for an avionics suite. Today, for the kind of avionics we're talking about, that could easily exceed $20,000.
Now, when you have a typical Cessna 172 today, which would be a used aircraft, its book value--because I happen to be part-owner of one--is about $35,000. If you have to put $20,000 of avionics in an aircraft that's entire value is only $35,000, that economic hurdle rate is too high.
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Much of the cost of avionics is due to the way we certify avionics in the FAA. And so our challenge is to find a better way to reduce the cost of certification, to get the economies of scale up, and to maintain the safety of the system. That is a technical challenge which we are embracing, and we must actually I think demonstrate successful accomplishment of that goal in order to be able to modernize the whole system.
Mr. EHLERS. Something else that we should do here is, reduce even further the term of product liability for the aircraft. That would have a direct economic impact as well.
Another question, specific. Will the new system reduce the amount of time spent on the taxiways and the tarmacs waiting for takeoff? That's still deplorable, a tremendous waste of fuel.
Mr. DONOHUE. I think, yes. Much of the technology will help that. But it really depends on the airports you look at. I would say at a class C airport, where I personally have experienced long delays to get a pre-departure clearance, that will greatly decrease pre-departure clearance time, whereas the airport wasn't so busy that you couldn't move to the taxiway and get to the active.
At Chicago-O'Hare, we can do better. But I'm not so sure that we can fundamentally change some of those delays on the ground.
Mr. EHLERS. A final question is about the Gore Commission report and the goals that have been set reducing the accident rate by five.
I think that would be wonderful if that can happen. But I also think there's a real danger of stating it the way I've seen it stated. The immediate reaction from the public is, ''If it's that easy, why haven't we done it already?'' The second reaction is going to be, you know, ''If you don't make it, what's wrong? The government messed up again.''
I'm not at all confident that goal is that readily achievable. Human factors are much tougher to control than a lot of other issues. We can make progress, but I think also you have to look at it from the broader perspective.
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We have made air travel the safest mode of travel to get a person from point A to point B in this country, yet we continue to dwell on safety factors. We continue to publicize--and by ''we'' I mean society as a whole--continue to publicize these accidents far beyond the impact they have on society as a whole.
And I deplore each and every accident. I deplore each and every death. But it struck me with the ValuJet accident that they were treated very unfairly in a lot of ways, by the media above all.
I pointed out to my constituents in numerous speeches, when asked about this; I said, ''That day the ValuJet crashed, an equal number of people were killed in highway accidents in this Nation. And an equal number have been killed every day since then. But you don't hear about it. People aren't concerned about it.''
Is it really fair to require people to pay that much more for air travel to get travel so much more safer, when in fact it's already far safer than their automobile?
What particularly disturbs me, of course, is to have a public meeting on this, and as people leave, watch them light up their cigarette and hop in their car and drive home, both of which activities are far more dangerous than flying.
I think it's time for us to get out in front and talk about the safety of air travel, and not the dangers of air travel--continue to do what we can to improve the safety. But I don't think we should sell the public a bill of goods and go along with this idea that somehow air travel is not safe, and we've got to keep working on it.
You don't necessarily have to respond to this. This is just an editorial on my part.
Mr. DONOHUE. Actually I would, if you don't mind having a brief response to that.
First of all, I agree with you. But there's a sociological aspect of flying which I can't personally rationally explain. But I do acknowledge that it exists. We have much less tolerance for accidents in aviation than for almost anything else that we do.
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Mrs. MORELLA. But Dr. Donohue, isn't it a fact that you don't have control when you're in the air?
Mr. DONOHUE. That's part of the psychological reason. Again, I think it's a fact. People have much more concern, whether we think they should or they shouldn't. They do, and maybe it's a lack of control. Maybe they know how to drive a car, they don't know how to fly an airplane. I mean, there are lots of hypotheses about why this is.
But I think the fact of the matter is----
Mr. EHLERS. May I just interject also?
A lot of us took a train to Hershey, Pennsylvania this weekend. I had a lot less control there, too.
Mr. DONOHUE. I'm not a psychologist, and I'm not going to try to give a profound answer on something I don't really understand.
But the other fact is that aviation is growing at a steady and increasing rate worldwide. And as that grows, with a constant rate--and we've had about a constant rate in aviation safety for the last 5 to 10 years--the number of hull losses due to air crashes will go up. It's straightforward mathematics.
The industry itself, the airlines, want us to increase the safety of the system, because it is bad publicity and it's bad for their business to continue to have the level of safety we have today. So I think this is not only something that the Federal Government desires. It's also something that the people who fly in the system, especially on the commercial side, desire.
If you look at the generational changes of aircraft, we have decreased dramatically with each succeeding new generation of aircraft the number of hull losses in those aircraft. The 777 and the Airbus, I think, the A340, have drastically higher safety records than a 707 or even a 737, which are earlier generations.
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We've done that by understanding human factors in the cockpit; the recognition that still, most of the accidents in aircraft are due to human factors. We have greatly increased the safety due to cockpit resource management, the human factors research.
We recognize there's still more work there to be done. We do know better ways of designing airplanes that will allow us to change our maintenance philosophy to put our maintenance efforts on things that need to be done, rather than things that we think might need to be done.
And going to free flight, and the new technology that we're talking about, the modernized NAS, we believe will actually greatly increase the systemwide safety. Will it give us a fivefold increase? We don't know yet. But we know we have to take those technologies and move in that direction to increase the safety of the system.
I think what Mr. Goldin stated, who was the one who selected that particular goal in NASA, is that it's a good goal, and researchers should always have high goals to try to achieve. We have 10 years to do that, and I think what we're going to do is do everything we can. We'll see how well we proceed.
Mr. EHLERS. Thank you.
Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you, Mr. Ehlers.
Ms. Rivers.
Ms. RIVERS. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
As I look through the planned activities here in your research plan, I notice that you say, under ''aircraft noise reduction,'' that you're expecting to expand your efforts in that area, in noise analysis and impact assessment tools.
What I'm a little confused in that you're expanding activities but cutting funding, so we're seeing a drop in funding from the last fiscal year appropriation. And if you actually go back to 1995, the 1998 request, we're talking about half as much money available just in the R&E area.
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When you couple that with the really big whack that noise mitigation is taking in the President's overall budget, where are we going with noise reduction? For districts like mine, which has a metropolitan airport right in the middle of it, it's a huge issue.
What can I go home and tell my folks?
Mr. DONOHUE. First of all, when we look at our budget for noise, we look at the combination of NASA's budget on aeronautical noise reduction as well as our own. Increasingly, in these austere budget times, we've had to go to unprecedented degrees of cooperation and coordination between different federal agencies in order to make sure that we eliminate duplication and we maximize coordination and cooperation.
We're actually holding constant between 1997 and 1998 on our noise investment, which is roughly $2,030,000. In 1997, it's $2,035,000. In 1998--if you go back earlier, that is a correct statement, where I think we did decrease from, say, the 1995 time frame.
It's because we've looked at what NASA is doing. NASA is spending, I think I just saw yesterday, over $100 million in noise abatement technology, looking to be able to get beyond stage 3 and the kinds of technologies that it takes to do that.
It's primarily in engine noise, compressor noise and turbine noise--also, looking very much at what the higher-speed, higher-horsepower engines will generate, and how you can control and potentially mitigate those noise levels.
In the next several years, because of NASA's extremely large investment in this area, and their technical expertise in this area, we're relying on NASA's investment for noise reduction.
Ms. RIVERS. Have you relied on NASA's investment in the past?
Mr. DONOHUE. Yes, we have. But their noise investment has gone up over time, and we've tried to balance between the two agencies what our combined investment was.
Ms. RIVERS. Has it gone up to a degree effective enough to offset----
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Mr. DONOHUE. Oh, I think they put orders of magnitude more money into noise research, and always have, over the FAA.
Ms. RIVERS. My recollection is, the change in the President's budget this year was about $121 million. Are we talking about that much money coming out of NASA for noise mitigation?
Mr. DONOHUE. I hesitate to speak for NASA, because the numbers first of all are not my numbers. But I think it's on that order of magnitude.
But I would defer to my NASA colleagues on the exact number.
Ms. RIVERS. I'm looking back on the 1997 appropriation. My numbers for the RE&D budget was that it was $3.6 million, dropping this year to $2.8-, which is a significant drop. It's not holding steady, or just a difference of $100,000 or so.
Mr. DONOHUE. Let me get back to you on those numbers, because mine differ. Let me make sure we've got the right numbers for you.
Ms. RIVERS. Okay.
Will FAA and NASA jointly be developing some sort of plan for noise mitigation that we can access relatively soon and explain to our constituencies?
Mr. DONOHUE. Of course.
Let me try to differentiate. NASA tends to work, obviously, more on the technology of noise reduction. The FAA oftentimes looks at the implementation of that technology into either regulations and standards, or into the design of the airspace. So there are really several degrees of freedom here.
The design of the airspace does not come out of the R&D account. So we basically use our Operations dollars in airspace design. And much of what we're trying to do in the FAA is to find better approach and departure patterns, perhaps steeper approaches within safety constraints to mitigate noise impact on the community. And we are doing much more than what this budget would indicate we are doing for noise mitigation.
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In our R&D budget, it tends to be much more towards technology and trying to get data that goes into international agreements and national regulations for equipage, which would only be for future aircraft.
And so I think, you know, there are kind of two different aspects here, and we need to talk about both.
Ms. RIVERS. The noise mitigation dollars that are coming into areas to be used on site--in other words, we're using to soundproof homes, or we're using on the ground as opposed to on the planes--where do those dollars originate, do you know? It may not be in your area.
Mr. DONOHUE. As far as I know--and I may be misspeaking here--but we don't look at any technology to put on the ground to help mitigate noise going through the house wall. In fact, I'm not sure anybody is doing that. Maybe they are.
Ms. RIVERS. There are noise mitigation dollars that ultimately find their way through county and state.
Mr. DONOHUE. At least I'm not aware that we're working on that. We're working much more on the technology of engine-generated noise, on the production side on the aircraft. Because we do regulate aircraft, and we do work on airspace design.
So those are the two areas we're focusing on.
Ms. RIVERS. Thank you.
Mr. DONOHUE. Sorry, I just was handed a note from my brains behind me, that in the AIP funds, I guess, we do work around airports to help do that sort of sound mitigation. And I'm not the expert in how we are investing our AIP funds.
Ms. RIVERS. That's the area I need to pursue.
Mr. DONOHUE. Yes.
Ms. RIVERS. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
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Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you, Ms. Rivers.
I'm glad you pursued that point, because it's one that I wanted to ask about, too. Obviously, you know, living in this region, we even have an organization, Citizens for the Abatement of Airport Noise, CAAN.
So I'm very interested in following through, too. Because I note from--I think it's $3.6- down to $2.9- or whatever million in the budget in that particular category, $3.6 million in the 1997 budget, compared to the request of the President of $2.9 million.
But I do want you to know of our interest, and I do plan to pursue it further.
I'd like now to recognize Mr. Cannon.
Mr. CANNON. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Dr. Donohue, in my prior life I was involved in venture capital. It's always amazing to me, because little ideas often have made a huge difference in our world. And I find that where there is good incentive, often ideas are generated.
So I'm wondering if you'd comment a little bit on the policy of the FAA to encourage people to come up with ideas and protect their intellectual property. I appreciated the reference to the commercial off-the-shelf software. The idea, I take from that, is that you're encouraging people to come up with packages that are complete.
And I recognize at the same time that your line of managing complex flows of technology is very, very difficult. So I don't mean this to be anything but, have you considered a policy internally? Is there a policy internally for encouraging the protection of intellectual property, or has that been a matter of deliberation?
Mr. DONOHUE. That has not been a big issue with our agency. I have run across this issue in other parts of my life, more on the DoD side.
But we are increasingly, as we go to commercial off-the-shelf systems, recognizing the proprietary rights and intellectual property rights of the software we use.
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We have two internal conflicts in dealing with that. One is that, because of the certification and the safety issues, we must have complete disclosure--for example, software and design details--to make sure that there are not hidden flaws that we can't find, and so we can certify the systems.
We need to do that in such a way, however, that the people who develop this equipment on their own feel non-threatened that once we have that sort of design disclosure that it would be released to their competitors. We also have the problem, as we go more and more to dependence on COTS, software especially, is that the world of software is constantly changing.
Our dependence upon other people's software starts becoming very high, and we have many different pieces of software talking together to each other under changing operating systems. This could get quite technical.
But managing all of that is very difficult, and we frequently say we need access to source code, because of configuration control, et cetera. And those are the only areas of contention that I know, and I think certainly our instructions, and our acquisition management system is, to respect the privacy of intellectual property rights. That's our policy.
Mr. CANNON. It would seem to me that part of the concern would be having people understand that, one, you're going to keep their secrets secret, at least internal to the agency; and secondly, that they'll be compensated even if you have to go into their source code and change it.
Do you have any initiatives to make people comfortable?
Mr. DONOHUE. I think we deal with that on a contract by contract basis now. We recognize, of course, those intellectual property issues are real, and we try to work whatever is an agreeable contract out between the two parties.
Mr. CANNON. I'm going to shift gears and ask one other question.
What is the current status of TCAS? And is that working well, or is that having internal problems?
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Mr. DONOHUE. TCAS is working extremely well. In fact, it's one of the major technological innovations, I guess, of the second half of the 20th century.
We have probably saved a large number of aircraft collisions because of that technology. Very sophisticated software in collision avoidance. We have, I think, version 7.0 of that software is in the process of going out.
We really have no funds, however, to go beyond version 7.0 of the software. We're going to have to rely on the private sector, from here on out, to continue to invest in that area, except in the area of what we call Automatic Dependence Surveillance Broadcast, which is an alternative way of doing collision avoidance that may be much less expensive, and therefore available to a much wider community of aircraft owners.1N
N1 The FAA subsequently indicated that ADS-B, standing alone, is not a collision avoidance system, but would require supplementation to provide collision protection.
So we are exploring that line. But this is one area where we have, I think very successfully, written the software inside the government and then made that software available to manufacturers, and then worked with the configuration control aspect through multiple manufacturers where all the software has to work exactly the same way, in a safe and certifiable manner.
We've probably learned an awful lot from that, and we're going to have to apply those lessons learned in the direction that we're going in the future.
Mrs. MORELLA. I was just going to suggest that Mr. Eschenbach may want to respond.
Mr. ESCHENBACH. I'd like to comment on that as well.
I would agree that TCAS has saved a lot of midair collisions, and has been very successful in that area. It does have two substantial problems that we need to attack.
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One is the cost. Their systems are $40- to $50,000 systems at minimum, so they affect really only 10,000 of the 200,000 airplanes that Dr. Donohue has referenced. So we really need a way to get the cost down substantially.
The second thing is that it took ages to get that system implemented. It took literally almost a lifetime for some of us that have waited, and it's still not there for most of the airplanes.
What he did talk about is ADS-B. With the use of GPS, you can imagine every airplane broadcasting its position over a local 5-mile area. And if you now have receivers in other airplanes that can listen to those broadcasts, you can have a very cheap collision-avoidance system that could cost no more than $1,000 to $2,000--which would be eminently achievable and affordable by even the lowest end of the general aviation community.
So there are still some things that we can and will do. But TCAS has been a major step forward for us.
Mr. CANNON. I'm sorry. I missed those initials.
AD----
Mr. ESCHENBACH. ADS-B, automatic dependence surveillance. And the dash indicates broadcast. That will be part of the system that we're talking about, and part of the FLIGHT 2000 program, demonstration program that will have these kinds of capabilities in it.
Mr. CANNON. Thank you very much.
Mrs. MORELLA. Thank you very much.
I'd like to recognize Ms. Stabenow.
Ms. STABENOW. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. And it's my pleasure to be on the Subcommittee, adding to the overwhelming majority from Michigan.
Mr. DONOHUE. I might add, our new chief scientist for software came from Western Michigan University.
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Ms. STABENOW. Wonderful. That's a positive point.
I wanted to follow up, if I might, concerning your partnerships with NASA, FAA and NASA, the integrated products team. If you could talk about the projects you're working on now, how many of those are nearing completion--how's it going?
Mr. DONOHUE. This is, I would say, both a very successful and also an extremely challenging activity. Federal agencies tend to like their autonomy, and to get two federal agencies to work very closely together--with different cultures, different management schemes, et cetera--is an interesting process.
And Associate Administrator Bob Whitehead and myself spent a lot of time trying to make sure that our organizations work well together. I think we've made tremendous progress. We have a joint FAA/NASA Integrated Products Team, working with people here in headquarters in Washington, in the FAA at the William Hughes Technical Center in Atlantic City, New Jersey; at the Ames Research Center in California, in the Langley Research Center in Virginia. And coordinating all those people in a profitable way is a challenge.
We are making great strides. There are some areas that could do better. There's a major program called CTAS which goes in the terminal area, that does metering of traffic in high-density airspace, building upon research that NASA had done originally for cockpit flight management systems, now moving it to the ground--very successful; is moving toward full-scale development and acquisition by the FAA.
Also, in the area of surface movement advisors, work that NASA has done on more optimum traffic flows on the ground--very successful work. We are looking at trying to meter that into our full acquisition, as funding allows.
So those are two, I think, very good examples where we have near-term product. In the far term, new virtual towers, and how we could take high technology and change the very way in which we do towers is something that we're looking at that would probably be very out-year. I wouldn't expect to see that technology come to deployed fruition until 2010 sort of time frame.
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But the CTAS should be installed at all of our high-capacity airports by 2005. That would be the Gore Commission's recommendation, and that's what we would be trying to work on doing that.
We have three prototype systems of NASA's at Denver International, Dallas-Fort Worth, and maybe Atlanta. I'm not sure where the third one is. So we've taken the NASA hardware. It is in prototype in real FAA facilities. And that's kind of the final stage of developmental evaluation before we do the cutover to hardening the code and going into deployment, which is key to our STARS program. Because those are the computers and displays that utilize this technology.
So we'll have to synchronize our acquisition programs with research in that area.
Ms. STABENOW. Thank you.
Mr. ESCHENBACH. If I could make a comment there, too.
As I said in my opening statement, I think the FAA has been doing an excellent job in coordinating their work with other government agencies. There is one area, however, that I think we're missing a good opportunity.
There's a huge amount of R&D that's being done that is not being leveraged that could be in the aerospace technology, and that's out of the Department of Defense. There's a huge amount of R&D that's being done there. They are one of the major users of the airspace, and as a consequence are a great beneficiary of the work that's being done in FAA and NASA. And we ought to be able to find better ways to coordinate those efforts.
Ms. STABENOW. I might just follow up on that point.
At this point, do you have plans along that line in terms of partnerships?
Mr. DONOHUE. We recognize what Ralph has said.
We have put together a tripartite oversight commission between myself, Dr. Bob Whitehead of NASA, and George Singley of the Defense Department, Defense Research and Engineering, to try to do a better job of coordinating our research budgets between all three of us in the aerospace area.
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That goes all the way from aerodynamics research, aviation human factors, into electronics. So yes, we are trying to draw much more heavily on what the DoD has had specifically in the areas of aviation human factors, and increasingly in the area of avionics design, where the DoD has made very large investments in what they call software radios. I would call them multimode, multiband receivers that offer the potential for drastically reducing the cost and increasing the capability of the avionics part in the future.
So I'm working hard to try to leverage DoD funds in that area and move it into the commercial sector; also, by the way, getting the cost down for DoD in some of this technology by increasing the economies of scale for the equipment, so that their costs go down as well. Instead of just a 15,000-airplane buy, it's got a potential 200,000-aircraft market, which should help reduce their costs.
Ms. STABENOW. Thank you.
Mrs. MORELLA. Do you have a technology transfer department?
Mr. DONOHUE. You're looking at it.
Mrs. MORELLA. All right.
You know a bill I had introduced that became law last year that came out of this Committee, a bill on technology transfer. From time to time, would you give us a report about how that's working? And if you see anything else that we need to do to help to bring together these partnerships--that was in a CRADA.
Mr. DONOHUE. Yes.
We're very active. I have an office that specifically works with CRADAs. We've been extremely active in that area.
Quite frankly, in the area of technology transfer, I see our agency as a transferee, getting technology. Because with our austere budgets, we're looking to the Defense Department, looking to the private sector to transfer technology to us.
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Mrs. MORELLA. I would imagine DOE and a number of other areas, it would be lucrative for you. Great.
There are a couple of issues I'd like to point out and get your response to. This Committee is interested in computer conversion for the year 2000. In fact, we're going to have a follow-up hearing next week on it to find out what you all are doing out there, since we told you you needed to have a plan, a timetable and a cost factor.
So what are you doing out there?
Mr. DONOHUE. We are very interested in the Year 2000 problem.
Mrs. MORELLA. Just as an aside, when anybody talks about it, they talk about, ''Imagine being up in the plane,'' you know. January 1, 2000, and the air traffic controllers don't have the computers converted.
Mr. DONOHUE. Yes.
[Laughter.]
Mr. DONOHUE. We have, fortunately, at our William Hughes Technical Center in Atlantic City, New Jersey, have virtually every computer and computer interface device that's in the system. We are in a process now of an intensive program of going through every one of those computers and advancing the clocks past the Year 2000 to, in fact, make sure that these systems will work as we roll through the Year 2000 timetable.
We believe that we're going to find some areas where we must make conversions. But until we have this test complete--and I believe May is our internal time frame for having all those tests finished--we're not going to have a full assessment of what the dollars will be, and exactly what systems we're going to have to change out.
We also are looking at all of our MIS systems from the administrative side. That area is also under me, and they expect to have the same assessment done by May.
We have quite a large diversity of equipment, so that makes it a fairly large task. I would wish that we would have already finished this, and I've put as much pressure as I can. But my staff keeps telling me that they need to have time to do it right.
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We have given estimates to the Department on what our preliminary estimates on dollars are. But we're going to have to firm those estimates up before we move forward with a funding request.
Mrs. MORELLA. It seemed to me from some figures I saw in the budget this year that the recommendation--I think it was like $2.3 billion more it would cost. It's got to be much lower than any of the estimates that we've heard from testimony, which was like about $1.10 per line. And it could go on up even higher than that.
Mr. DONOHUE. First of all, from the FAA's standpoint, we can't afford to make those kinds of estimates, because we don't believe that kind of money's going to be available. That's why we're trying to do a very detailed assessment.
I mean, if one does rough, order of magnitude estimates, you can probably come up with those kinds of estimates. Those are conservative--well, some people might think they're not conservative. But I think that we are going to only be able to afford to change the things that we absolutely have to change. We need to know exactly what are those things.
That's why we're doing full, end-to-end testing. We are in a situation in a number of our computers, unfortunately, where the operating systems are in assembly language code. And the people who wrote that code are no longer with us. IBM has, for example, told us that they will not support some of the operating system through the Year 2000 conversion, because they don't know what's in that code. They wouldn't know how to rewrite it, and we don't.
That's why we have gone to the testing version of saying we can advance our clocks, and we will run through our systems and look for specific failures to show up, and then trace down where did that failure occur, and try to identify the specific segment that needs to be replaced, as opposed to taking a much more conservative approach and just changing out all of our computers.
If we tried to change out all of our computers, you would see numbers at least as big as you just mentioned.
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Mrs. MORELLA. Big as I mentioned? The Gardiner group says $30 billion to do this throughout the Federal Government, just the Federal Government.
Mr. DONOHUE. There's another fact that needs to be taken into account here.
Today's computers, most computers have got a 3-year economic life. I think the IRS recognizes that you can fully depreciate a computer out in 3 years.
Many of our computers are well beyond their actual useful economic life. Many of ours are, and we're trying to replace those as quickly as we can, as well as we can afford.
Many of the lower-end computers, the PC varieties, can affordably be changed out. So if they have problems in those, we can replace those with newer computers before then, and we won't have a problem.
Mrs. MORELLA. I'd like to ask another question, then turn to my colleagues.
Another area that this Committee has been interested in, and has held a hearing on, is the area of computer security and encryption. We did a hearing on computer security. We looked at the GAO report, that took as an example a Department of Defense and said that in 1 year, in 1995, the Department of Defense had 250,000 computer break-ins. And of that number, 65 percent were successful.
What are you doing at FAA about that? Are you aware of it?
Mr. DONOHUE. Another excellent question, Madam Chairwoman. You are very astute today.
Computer security is of concern to us. It's ironic, because the old system that we have, with its many shortfalls, which have been widely recognized, had one benefit. It's a fairly secure system. Its software is in assembly language or JOBIO languages that modern computer scientists aren't taught. They were closed systems, they were mainframes, and they had intrinsically high security.
That's the good news for those systems. The good news for the new systems is, they are modern, they are open architectures, they are internetworked, they're doing all of the things that give computers great power and flexibility. The bad news for our new systems is that they're open architectures, they're interconnected, and therefore they have a susceptibility to penetration.
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We are currently going through our architectural design for the system, both the software and the hardware and the communication links in the system, trying to recognize where we have to put up firewalls, software firewalls and also hardware firewalls, and also levels of encryption.
I believe that commercial encryption is all that our system will require, or probably that we can afford. Commercial encryption today is good enough for moving large amounts of financial dollars through the network, and we believe that level of encryption, which is very affordable, is good enough for our system, which is not a militarily-hardened system.
We will have to monitor for attempts at penetration. We may want to work with the Defense Department and use their own penetration detection and evaluation system instead of us generating a whole new system for ourselves, because they have much more money to finance that sort of activity than we do.
But we are concerned about it. Some of our data links will have to become encrypted. But again, both for international reasons and financial reasons, I believe we'll go to commercial encryption. But other data links will not have to be, because they don't have critical safety of flight, and we can have the firewalls in place that do not allow our system to be corrupted.
Mrs. MORELLA. I want to give Mr. Eschenbach an opportunity, if there's anything you wanted to add.
Mr. ESCHENBACH. I was going to comment as well that it's not only a computer security issue, but as Dr. Donohue mentioned, it's a communications security issue.
As we go to digital communications in the next generation of air traffic equipment, you've got to be very careful about the security involved with somebody else's spoofing an air traffic control command. So all those links need to be encrypted as well, and need to have complete security.
But I agree with Dr. Donohue that commercial security levels--there's no reason to try and have the FAA reinvent the wheel there. That is another area where the cooperation with the DoD, where they put a lot of work into that area, could be very beneficial.
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Mrs. MORELLA. I am advising young people who have any affinity, or like the computer at all, to go into computer security as a field. We really don't have enough specialists.
Thank you for indulging me. Mr. Gordon and Mr. Cannon, I'll now turn to you.
Mr. GORDON. I'm very indulgeable.
Dr. Donohue, I want to follow up on the good questions brought forth by the Chair. For my information, would you explain to me what advancing the clock on the computer means, and for what time period that gets you?
Mr. DONOHUE. I think the concern is that, because people were writing code and not assuming that their code would be utilized going beyond the century, that they may have only used, in places where they had ''date,'' they only used the last two digits.
Mr. GORDON. I understand that.
But what do you mean by the term, ''advance the clock?''
Mr. DONOHUE. We'll actually put in flight plans and make the computers think that it's midnight, 2000 at or something like that; and put through the system a clock that would indicate it's in the 21st Century, and then see to what extent is any of the operation corrupted. Are we dividing by zero?
I mean, places where dates may be dividing into a field--obviously, when it trips to zero zero, you get an infinity. That can blow up software.
So those are the kinds of things that we are concerned about.
Mr. GORDON. That's just a test? That's not a cure, then?
Mr. DONOHUE. No, no. This is just a test to identify where might we have problems. Once we identify where the problems are, we will go cure those specific areas.
Mr. GORDON. Are there reasons to believe that there won't be problems across the board? Why wouldn't there be problems in some areas?
Mr. ESCHENBACH. There definitely will be problems across the board. There's no reason to suspect that won't be the case.
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But I think what we have is, we have two ways to solve the problems. One is to go back through the design and look at every line of code, and see if it involves a date, and see if it's handled appropriately. But I think Dr. Donohue is proposing another option, and that is a valid way to do it: that is, to simulate the date, so you advance the date of the computer. You run it, and you see what breaks.
The only danger there is that you haven't tested everything. It may be that it would break. It doesn't break here, but it might break if you were on the other side of the date line, for instance, and you hadn't thought to put that as part of your test that you're advancing.
So that's the risk that you do in looking at that approach.
Mr. DONOHUE. Ralph is absolutely correct. Again it's a matter of affordability.
For our more modern code, we can run it through code testers to look for every place where you have a date time group in there, and then try to identify how is that being used, and do code analysis. Certainly, for all of our new systems, that's a very straightforward thing to do.
It's the old legacy systems that have assembly language where we can't run it through that sort of analysis. That is my, personally, biggest concern. And our view is, the only tractable way we know of to handle that is through the testing approach.
Mr. GORDON. Thanks for advancing my knowledge there.
On the encryption and computer security, is there--I appreciate your remarks about hopefully being able to use the commercial encryption software and not reinventing the wheel. I think that's a good approach.
But is there any kind of a government-wide coordination in trying to talk about the problems as well as solve them, so that we're not doing the same thing in half a dozen different places? Are you a part of any kind of coalition?
Mr. DONOHUE. Our Chief Information Officer reports to me, and he would probably be the better person to ask that question of, because he would be involved in that.
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I know within the Department, we have a department-wide coordination effort. My guess is, that probably has a link Federal Government-wide. But practically speaking, different parts of the government, I think, use their computers in very different ways.
And so, the reality is that probably each individual agency ultimately is probably going to have to solve their own problem.
Now, people who are primarily into MIS systems or personnel systems, that's pretty common. But we are very computer-intensive in our business, and we've got computers that aren't doing anything--except for, perhaps, the Defense Department would be the closest that would come to what we do.
So, many of our problems will not be common mode across the rest of the Federal Government.
Mr. GORDON. Thank you. I think you're taking a thoughtful approach to that.
I think we have a vote probably in a few minutes, so I'm just going to submit questions for your response at a later date.
Mrs. MORELLA. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. GORDON. If I could, maybe I'll just yield the remainder of my time, since he hasn't had a chance to speak yet. Would that be all right?
Mr. MCHALE. As I understand, that's 22 seconds?
[Laughter.]
Mr. MCHALE. I thank the gentleman for his courtesy. I have a conflicting meeting of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee which ended just a few minutes ago, gentlemen.
And I guess this ought to go to Dr. Donohue.
The Administration's budget proposal is submitted to this Subcommittee, the Technology Subcommittee, does not include the research, engineering and development funding levels for years beyond Fiscal Year 1998.
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Are those figures available, and when might they be submitted to this Subcommittee?
Mr. DONOHUE. As I said earlier, first of all, we are working what those numbers will be right now based upon the Gore Commission recommendation. So any numbers we've had heretofore, I think need to be looked at very carefully to try to understand how we'll modernize the system by 2005.
We provide those numbers to the Department and so I think the right person to really ask is how the Department moves those numbers forward.
Mr. MCHALE. Obviously it's helpful for us to have a longer range view than is provided by the figures currently within our possession.
I have one follow-up question that relates to that.
Ironically, as I questioned you, I looked just above your head and there's a picture on the back wall of the JVX-Tilt Rotor. I have no idea how long that photograph has been there.
But what was once a pretty exotic prototype is now becoming an operational aircraft. I'm also on the National Security Committee and we provided funding last year for the purchase of the first five operational V22 Ospreys for the Marine Corps.
We anticipate in the budget presented by the Administration to fund five more this year.
To what extent are you incorporating the advance of tilt rotor technology into your long-term operational planning?
I represent a district that has a major airport, Lehigh Valley International Airport, that is surrounded by substantial development. That airport, operating without great reference to tilt rotor technology, is now feeling enormous pressure to buy surrounding land in order to set aside that land for future runways that may be required by the population demand 10, 15, 20 years from now.
Well, if tilt rotor technology continues to move forward at the pace with which it is advancing, I think in terms of that airport's future and your operational planning, the technology will have a very substantial impact.
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Can you give me a description of how tilt rotor technology and your faith in that technology is influencing your developmental planning?
Mr. DONOHUE. Yes, sir.
We have an on-going program looking specifically at tilt rotor technology and how that will impact our use of the airspace. The commercialization of that technology has taken some time. I think we're now starting to see some promising activity in commercial orders going in to buy.
I think the Japanese actually ordered 10 tilt rotor aircraft with advanced deposits to my knowledge.
That's a key economic milestone because the trick has been to be able to get the tilt rotor aircraft to a point where the seat miles were economically competitive to fixed wing aircraft.
To the extent that we start achieving that, I believe that more and more of those aircraft will be purchased.
One of the main issues with tilt rotor is urban noise. And so in that area, we just completed a very large experiment last year at the Olympic games where we had 100 helicopters who have similar noise signatures in the low altitude airspace in an urban area, in this case, Atlanta, Georgia, where we experimented putting in low altitude routes using our Automatic Dependence Surveillance technology which would give them IFR capability and we found and we measured extensively the noise footprints on the ground.
We used the freeway system in Atlanta as our airways, and what we found there is that the noise from the helicopters which is kind of the peak noise you'd expect from a tilt rotor was not noticeable by the surrounding community because it was below the noise level of the automobiles.
That provided a very good intercity network where the vertical takeoff and landing aircraft really start showing their economic promise for having austere airports, small airfields, small footprints for land use.
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So it's really a combination of many things, the noise footprint, low altitude noise footprints over city areas, and the economics of the aircraft, which will dictate how it goes forward.
But I think we demonstrated we can handle the noise.
Mr. MCHALE. As we get the additional figures with regard to future development of budgets, I'll be looking for components related to tilt rotor planning in the hope that technology can play an important role.
Madam Chairwoman, I have now consumed my 22 seconds.
[Laughter.]
Mr. MCHALE. I thank the gentleman once again for yielding.
Mrs. MORELLA. Time expands to fill Mr. McHale's need.
Yes, Mr. Eschenbach?
Mr. ESCHENBACH. If I could just add one quick comment.
The Advisory Committee has recently set up a Subcommittee to specifically address tilt rotor and general aviation issues. So we should be able to give some better insight on that.
Mrs. MORELLA. And you say we're going to be getting a report from the Advisory Committee?
Mr. ESCHENBACH. Yes. We have one that we're just within months of submitting to the Administrator who it goes to and we just need to get the final vote on that.
That deals however principally with NAS architecture is what that's dealing with.
Mrs. MORELLA. That's right.
And then you have the subsequent one.
Mr. Cannon, I yield to you such time as you may consume.
Mr. CANNON. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I have no other questions.
Mrs. MORELLA. Then my final question to you, because we are going to be going on to vote, unless Mr. Gordon has another question or Mr. McHale, is who is going to be the next FAA Administrator.
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[Laughter.]
Mr. DONOHUE. Your crystal ball's as good as mine.
Mr. ESCHENBACH. I was hoping you'd tell me.
[Laughter.]
Mrs. MORELLA. Well, I do want to----
Oh, I didn't ask you about GPRA, you know, the government performance.
Any comments on that?
I'm also interested in the personnel aspect of it too representing a lot of federal employees.
Mr. DONOHUE. In my line of business, we are managing about 125 individual projects which are under project configuration and control. We have a vast amount of data and base lines. It's actually quite easy for us to meet many of these. We're working very closely with the Department to see how we roll the data up into meaningful Government Performance Act measurable outcomes.
We don't want to flood people with data, we want to give information so we're working very actively on how do we take our data and come up with those for Congress.
The Department is coordinating that for us.
Mrs. MORELLA. Is this whole exercise helpful?
Mr. DONOHUE. Absolutely. It's a discipline that is required. I think it's extremely helpful. I think it's very tough for many people in the Federal Government to adopt this kind of discipline but it is absolutely the right thing to do.
Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Eschenbach?
Mr. ESCHENBACH. I would agree. No other comments, but I agree that the structure is so important that I think it's been adding to the efficiency greatly.
Mrs. MORELLA. Very good, fine.
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Mr. McHale, did you have any other questions you'd like to ask? I'll give you another 22 seconds.
[Laughter.]
Mr. MCHALE. With incredible efficiency, I was able to ask all my questions in 22 seconds.
[Laughter.]
Mr. MCHALE. I have no further. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Mrs. MORELLA. I want to thank you both for being here. It was excellent testimony and we'll continue to be in touch.
Any members who aren't here will be able to offer some questions for your response if that's okay.
Thank you Committee members, thank you.
The Subcommittee is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:45 p.m., Thursday, March 13, 1997, the hearing was adjourned.]
[The following information was received for the record:]
APPENDIX
ANSWERS TO ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS FOR MR. RALPH ESCHENBACH, CHAIRMAN, FAA RESEARCH, ENGINEERING AND DEVELOPMENT ADVISORY COMMITTEE
1. Circular A-11 specifies that agency R&D budgets be divided into the following budget categories: basic research, applied research, and development. Development is defined (page 87, 1996 edition of A-11) as ''systematic application of knowledge toward the production of useful materials, devices, and systems or methods; including design, development, and improvement of prototypes and new processes to meet specific requirements.''
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Are there activities supported under Activity 1 of the F&E account for FY 1997 which are not included under the definition of R&D activities in OMB Circular A11? If so, describe the general nature of the activities not reported as R&D; provide brief descriptions of the principal projects, including funding levels; and indicate the fraction of the total Activity 1 budget supporting the activities. Provide the same information for activities that are reported as R&D.
Would it be more efficient to aggregate all research and development programs and activities into one account?
[Response] Our Advisory Committee has focused its attention on the RE&D activities and not on the F&E activities. For this reason I do not feel we are qualified to answer this question.
2. In 1995, NASA and FAA established a memorandum of understanding related to air traffic management. The agreement covers joint R&D activities to develop, validate, and implement airspace system user operational flexibility and productivity improvements. The activities are being managed by an FAA/NASA Integrated Product Team.
Have any conflicts developed between the roles of NASA R&D centers and FAA's Federally Funded R&D Center at MITRE relative to this joint agreement on air traffic management, since the MITRE center focuses its activities on new technologies in the area of air traffic management?
[Response] We have recommended and supported all activities which seek to leverage and coordinate R&D activities within the government. The agreements, and associated relationship between FAA and NASA, have been the best example to date of this cooperation. One of the first efforts of this coordination has been to identify the overlaps in roles, responsibilities, and activities, that the team has been addressing through adjustment or even elimination of any duplication of activities in meeting the objectives of the integrated R&D program.
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3. The Gore Commission recommended establishing a national goal of reducing the aviation fatal accident rate by a factor of five within ten years and enhancing aviation safety research. Particularly, the commission targets NASA to play a larger role in aviation safety research.
What should the FAA and NASA roles be in these areas?
[Response] Our recommendation has been that NASA should focus on the basic research and development activities, and that the FAA should focus on the implementation of the results of these activities.
Is the FAA better suited to focus on short-term safety issues?
[Response] Safety is the highest priority within the FAA, and the implementation of these activities can be short term (more explosive detectors at airports) or long term. (a new NAS architecture).
4. The Gore Commission in its recent report recommended increased efforts by FAA on human factors research and on development of improved modeling and analytical techniques for the airspace system. Yet the FY 1998 budget request cuts contract support for human factors research by 16% and eliminates contract support for modeling and simulation for air traffic management.
Although the National Transportation Safety Board has repeatedly included runway incursions as one of the most critical safety issues, the FY 1998 budget request reduces the Runway Incursion Reduction program from $6 million to $3 million.
The RE&D Advisory Committee in its major review of the R&D budget set as the top research priority in its 1993 report--the Augustine report the safe achievement of additional airspace and airport system capacity. In contrast, the FY 1998 request for System Capacity and Air Traffic Management R&D is 23% below last year's appropriation and 65% below the FY 1995 appropriations level.
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The RE&D Advisory Committee recommends in the 1997 R&D plan that increased priority be given to the weather R&D program. The FY 1998 budget request cuts contract weather research by 68%.
Do these examples represent cases of basic disagreement between FAA program staff and outside advisory groups on the importance of specific research areas? In your opinion, what factors influenced FAA to establish budget priorities different from these recommendations?
Do you feel FAA is adequately addressing these critical research needs?
Do you feel FAA adequately integrated your committee's recommendations into its budget process?
How should FAA improve its budget prioritization process?
[Response] There is little disagreement between the FAA and the Advisory Committee concerning the critical research areas identified above. In arriving at final budget numbers, however, there are many more things to consider than just the recommendations of the Advisory Committee. These include, but are not limited to, other research within the FAA, research being done by other organizations, advice from other advisory groups, funding initiatives by Congress, cost/benefit ratio of specific research activities, risk/reward ratio of specific research, etcetera. For all of the recent recommendations, the FAA has provided a specific response. Although they have not implemented every recommendation, they have responded to them all. Their responses have been specific and to the point. Almost without exception, the responses have been favorably received by the Advisory Committee.
5. Does FAA have a complete and comprehensive Air Traffic Control systems architecture? As part of the architecture, does the FAA plan to develop a ''technical'' description which defines all required information technology?
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[Response] At our April 8-9 meeting, we made several recommendations to the FAA concerning the architecture for the new NAS. Our letter to the Administrator is attached to these answers.
6. Should the FAA apply the IPT concept to other areas of safety research including aging aircraft, especially considering that by the year 2000, over 2,500 commercial aircraft in the United States may be flying beyond their original design life?
[Response] We have not addressed this issue in our deliberations.
7. Has the Advisory Committee made any recent recommendations in the area of human factors and aviation medicine?
[Response] The Advisory Committee recently submitted its ''Report to the Committee on the Status and Organization of Human Factors within the FAA'' dated August 5, 1996. It contains several recommendations in the areas of human factors and aviation medicine. A copy of this report can be made available to you at your request.
8. Is the FAA giving security activities, as opposed to safety activities, too much of a priority in the budget request?
[Response] In our recent recommendations to the Administrator (See Attached) we have recommended reducing security investments by 20% and using those funds to support Air Traffic Systems.
9. Do you feel the FAA has the proper balance between RE&D activities performed ''in-house'' as opposed to the activities performed through contracts?
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[Response] Nothing has stood out to us as an inappropriate balance between ''in-house'' and contracted activities.
10. A recent independent study performed by the accounting firm Coopers & Lybrand recommends the consolidation of the FAA's technical center in Atlantic City and the aeronautical center in Oklahoma City. Should this be considered?
[Response] The Advisory Committee has not looked at this issue, but I would recommend a consolidation only if there is an overlap in their missions.
11. Has the FAA actively involved the Advisory Committee in their efforts to comply with the Government Performance and Results Act (P.L. 103-62)? How could the FAA increase the Advisory Committee's role?
[Response] I do not know about the GPRA, but I do know that the FAA has substantially increased our involvement in their budget planning process during the last year. We have been requested to do a much more thorough analysis of their investments in R&D this last year than we did during the previous two years of my involvement. They have also been much more appreciative of, and receptive to, our recommendations during this time.
12. Please list FAA's top R&D priorities as recommended by the RE&D Advisory Committee?
[Response] We agree with the FAA's priorities being Safety, Capacity, and Productivity. With the exception of Security (See attached Letter to the Administrator), we agree with the basic allocation of funds.
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13. Should FAA do more noise abatement research in its RE&D account?
[Response] Noise abatement is a critical issue, but it is not nearly as important for Safety, Capacity, and Productivity as the next generation NAS and the Flight 2000 project. Therefore, we have not recommended any changes to the noise abatement funding.
Trimble Navigation Limited,
645 North Mary Avenue,
Post Office BOX 3642,
Sunnyvale CA 94088-3642,
April 17, 1997.
The Honorable Barry L. Valentine,
Acting Administrator,
Federal Aviation Administration,
800 Independence Avenue, SW,
Washington, DC 20591
DEAR MR. VALENTINE:
As Chairman of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA's) Research, Engineering and Development (R,E&D) Advisory Committee, it is my pleasure to provide to you the Committee's recommendations on FM's planned fiscal year 1999-2003 research and development investments. We are early in our deliberations, and at this point, we do not feel that we have enough information to make detailed line-item recommendations, but the Subcommittees will be gathering this information over the summer with the goal of providing more guidance after our Fall meeting. However, since the Air Traffic System will come under immense pressure during the next decade and it is so important to the vitality of the Nation, we felt that the following six recommendations should be sent to you immediately.
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The Committee recommends that FAA set the specific objectives and detailed operational concepts for free flight. This should include a plan and system architecture for the transition from the current NAS system to free flight. In support of verifying the free flight operational concept and transitioning to free flight, FAA should develop a detailed plan, operational concept and architecture for the Flight 2000 demonstration and validation. In particular, the fiscal year 1998-2003 R,E&D program should include a comprehensive, large-scale simulation effort to develop and validate the operational concepts. In order to meet the objectives of live operational testing starting in the fiscal year 2000, these simulation efforts must start in 1998. The ATS Subcommittee has been asked to evaluate the 1998/99 research allocations and determine if any adjustments need to be made. This report will be submitted in September, 1997.
The Committee strongly supports the Flight 2000 demonstration program. To accomplish Flight 2000 and the transition to free flight by the 2005 date suggested by the Gore Commission, FAA must provide strong leadership within the Aviation Community to ensure stakeholder support and dedicate its R,E&D investments in air traffic services and related areas to achieving free flight and Flight 2000.
The FAA should place more emphasis on the National Resource Specialists (NRS's). We recommend that FM fill vacancies with well-qualified people who understand the role of the NRS. Furthermore, FM should utilize the NRSs to guide its research and development investments in aircraft safety and related areas including collaborative efforts with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
We recommend that FAA consider diverting 20 percent of its planned investments in aviation security to high priority requirements for air traffic services research. We do not feel that the money is being misused, but that it would be more in the National interest to support the Flight 2000 program and the transition to free flight.
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The Committee strongly endorses the FM's collaborative research and development activities with NASA. In the collaboration, NASA's role should be focused strongly on basic research that provides a technology base in FM mission areas. FAA's role principally should be in applied research and development in support of its regulatory and air traffic services responsibilities.
The Committee members believe that air transportation is vital to the economic development and quality of life in the United States. We feel that the above recommendations are essential to maintaining our leadership in the International Aviation Community, expanding the capacity of the system, protecting the environment and improving our already excellent safety record.
We are honored to serve you, the FM, and our Federal government by providing these recommendations on your research and development investments.
Sincerely,
MR. RALPH ESCHENBACH, Chairman, Research, Engineering and Development Advisory Committee
Insert offset folios 1-54
42—583CC
1997
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FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION RESEARCH, ENGINEERING, AND DEVELOPMENT AUTHORIZATION
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
MARCH 13, 1997
[No. 6]
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
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F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr., Wisconsin, Chairman
SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York
HARRIS W. FAWELL, Illinois
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland
CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania
DANA ROHRABACHER, California
STEVEN SCHIFF, New Mexico
JOE BARTON, Texas
KEN CALVERT, California
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
DAVE WELDON, Florida
MATT SALMON, Arizona
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota
MARK FOLEY, Florida
THOMAS W. EWING, Illinois
CHARLES W. ''CHIP'' PICKERING, Mississippi
CHRIS CANNON, Utah
KEVIN BRADY, Texas
MERRILL COOK, Utah
PHIL ENGLISH, Pennsylvania
GEORGE R. NETHERCUTT, JR., Washington
TOM A. COBURN, Oklahoma
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PETE SESSIONS, Texas
GEORGE E. BROWN, Jr., California RMM*
RALPH M. HALL, Texas
BART GORDON, Tennessee
JAMES A. TRAFICANT, Jr., Ohio
TIM ROEMER, Indiana
ROBERT E. ''BUD'' CRAMER, Jr., Alabama
JAMES A. BARCIA, Michigan
PAUL MCHALE, Pennsylvania
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida
LYNN N. RIVERS, Michigan
ZOE LOFGREN, California
LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
MICHAEL F. DOYLE, Pennsylvania
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
BILL LUTHER, Minnesota
WALTER H. CAPPS, California
DEBBIE STABENOW, Michigan
BOB ETHERIDGE, North Carolina
NICK LAMPSON, Texas
DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon
TODD R. SCHULTZ, Chief of Staff
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BARRY C. BERINGER, Chief Counsel
PATRICIA S. SCHWARTZ, Chief Clerk/Administrator
VIVIAN A. TESSIERI, Legislative Clerk
ROBERT E. PALMER, Democratic Staff Director
Subcommittee on Technology
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland, Chairwoman
CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota
THOMAS W. EWING, Illinois
CHRIS CANNON, Utah
KEVIN BRADY, Texas
MERRILL COOK, Utah
BART GORDON, Tennessee
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
LYNN N. RIVERS, Michigan
DEBBIE STABENOW, Michigan
JAMES A. BARCIA, Michigan
PAUL MCHALE, Pennsylvania
MICHAEL F. DOYLE, Pennsylvania
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
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*Ranking Minority Member
**Vice Chairman
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
March 13, 1997:
Dr. George L. Donohue, Associate Administrator for Research and Acquisitions, Federal Aviation Administration, Washington, DC
Mr. Ralph Eschenbach, Chair, Engineering and Development Advisory Committee, Washington, DC
APPENDIX
Responses to Post-Hearing Questions by Ralph Eschenbach
Responses to Post-Hearing Questions by the Federal Aviation Administration
(iii)