FAA looks to industry to free up spectrum

The Federal Aviation Administration is leading a bid to get contractors to develop a solution to free up spectrum by combining surveillance, air safety and weather radar applications into a single system by 2024.

The plan would consolidate legacy surveillance radars including aircraft surveillance, air traffic and weather radars, operated by the Defense Department, Customs and Border Protection and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under one system, FCW reported.

The spectrum that these systems occupy is potentially worth $19 billion under auction in a couple of decades, and agencies want to use the relocation fund to pay for the program to develop new radar capabilities and use proceeds to move agency applications over to the new system in the future.

In order to meet the 2024 deadline, contractors would probably already need to have a candidate technology that is already under development, FCW quoted Rebecca Guy, FAA program manager for the relocation plan, as saying.