As the U.S. follows a deliberate pace in modernizing its air traffic system by 2025, two of the world's largest aerospace companies are joining hands, in part, to encourage faster progress.

Boeing has a huge stake in this major endeavor because it wants to sell new commercial aircraft without having congestion and delays crimp sales. Lockheed Martin--supplier of ground-based ATC systems to 12 nations handling 60% of the world's air traffic--has an interest in seeing all this talk about modernizing the U.S. ATC system turned into action.

So it's no surprise that Boeing's Air Traffic Management unit has just agreed to form a "strategic alliance" with Lockheed Martin's Transportation and Security unit on every ATC contract that may emerge in the next five years. The alliance, which does not constitute a joint venture, could be renewed after that.

As the U.S. modernizes its air traffic system, the partners expect there will be closer ties between automated cockpits and automated ATC on the ground. Boeing says it knows the airplane-centric part of this equation, while Lockheed Martin knows the ground side. Together the two expect to help the government craft a network-centric ATC system. Both are leading Pentagon contractors where net-centric command-and-control systems are quite similar to those in the ATC arena. The airborne/ground-segment integration will have to be seamless, notes Kevin Brown, the general manager of Boeing's Air Traffic Management unit.

However, the biggest ATC contract in town that's now up for grabs is one where the two aerospace giants will not be on the same team. Lockheed Martin has already chosen its partners to go after the FAA's Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast contract. And Boeing is advising the U.S. government, so can't join the team. In addition, both companies say they will continue to honor all of their existing agreements with other companies with which they're teamed on various ATC projects.

But all future arrangements will involve the two partners--although they may have additional team members. "We're going to figure out ways to combine the strengths of the two companies to drive the technology and methods and concepts of operations needed to support the FAA," says Judy Marks, president of the Lockheed Martin unit.

It's noteworthy that a similar partnership--the Air Traffic Alliance--was formed in 2002 by EADS, Airbus and Thales. Their objective is to accelerate ATC modernization in Europe. These partners are the driving force behind Sesar--the Single European Sky Air Traffic Management (ATM) Research Program. Sesar is run by a broad-based industry team contracted to define Europe's ATC makeover with government funding.

In the U.S., the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) is leading the effort with a group of integrated product teams comprising government officials and industry volunteers. But there's no lead systems integrator--a contractor charged with the task of overseeing the development of a new ATC system.

Brown says the JPDO probably will not establish a lead systems integrator and is more likely to execute the ATC modernization plan on a program-by-program basis. Boeing and Lockheed Martin will try to speed up some of the development work. And considering that air traffic is growing twice as fast as gross domestic product in the U.S., improving ATC is an important endeavor that's not just timely but is "somewhat overdue," he adds.

The first FAA contract Boeing and Lockheed Martin plan to pursue is the System-Wide Information Management (SWIM) project, when the FAA puts that out for bid. This effort will build on the cooperation of the two companies on the Network-Enabled Operations (NEO) ATC demonstrations (AW&ST Oct. 10, 2005, p. 41). In this simulation, the two companies showed how FAA, Homeland Security and Defense Dept. ATC systems could interact and share aircraft tracks and other data seamlessly. With SWIM software, data could be shared among terminal and en route ATC centers using different automation systems as well as U.S. air defense systems, Customs and Border Protection sites, and so on. The scenario involved an intruder aircraft flying from Pennsylvania into the National Capital Region airspace and having military aircraft intercept it.

SWIM was the key in managing information across the ATC and command-and-control architectures. After the NEO demonstration, the FAA obtained funding to start the development of SWIM in the Fiscal 2007 budget. Although the money spent so far has been modest, Boeing and Lockheed Martin regard this technology as crucial for air traffic system modernization. One reason is that there's no way the FAA can replace many of the newer parts of the existing network as it starts building the next one--which will have to integrate with and "talk" to a variety of legacy systems for years, and probably decades, to come.

Moreover, both companies will also work on expanding operational trials of the type that they have been participating in together--such as the tailored arrivals with United Airlines 777s at San Francisco International Airport (AW&ST Oct. 9, 2006, p. 54).

Meanwhile, the partners say the ATC sector has a large and competitive industry, and internal reviews found no anti-trust concerns. Raytheon--another major supplier of ground-based equipment to the FAA--said in response to the alliance news that it remains confident of its leadership position in the sector. It expects to play a prominent role in the next-generation ATC system.