1 I'm pleased to see you've adopted the preferred spelling of the Governor of California's surname; if more people do that he'll be laughed off the political stage despite his crusade to outlaw criticism of noble, courageous, far-sighted public servants such as himself. 

2 I glossed over the Noisome . . . it's pretty great!

ATC computters:  Err, if it ain't broke, fix it till it is?

3 Also, 8 bjillion dolors to replace 90 out of 160 systems?  That seems a touch high.  Then again, we recently paid quite a lot more than that to have hezbollah torture and murder a bunch of jews.  I mean, not that Iran takes the money the Bidens funneled to them and funnels it to terrorist organizations that murder Americans and Israelis.  That would never happen.

4 Start replacing. 

If you go ninety sites, times two radars (tracking and weather) per site, then maybe the pure hardware costs for 180 radar antenna could be a hundred million. 

I could wind up with a conflcit of interest down the road, I'm not an expert in the technologies, and I have no first hand knowledge of FAA stuff. 

But, if you allow for how the FAA does business, and if you allow for basic costs of the radars, radios, etc. I think it is actually a bit of a reasonable starter ask.  Bureaucracy and engineering studies. 

I think the radars should be cheaper, if they were able to obtain a bulk rate, or if someone has a modular technology that can do everything that they need. 

If they only need 90 radars, if the development/integration costs are 'cheap', then probably you are still not getting those built, purchased, and integrated soon. 

The older systems would be using vacuum electric device power amplifiers like klystrons, or travelling wave tubes, etc.  (You can still buy those power amplifiers, but maybe not the original models.)  A solid state amplifier digital phased array radar is not goign to just be a drop in replacement. 

SpaceX is kicking NASA's butt, and part of that is congressional funding oversight can be very disruptive of technical programs.  NASA, the Navy and the Air Force are sexier than the FAA, but they and NOAA are examples of federal bureaucracies that procure this sort of stuff.  NOAA has managed to have a fairly modern network of weather radars.  You can no doubt think of ill starred NASA, Air Force or Navy procurements. 

I feel this explains why the status quo problems. 

5 "Even the Ars Technica commentariat didn't like that."


Everyone's conservative about what he knows best.  And I can feel the Arse commentariat's desire to downvote me to oblivion from here.

6 I've looked into it a bit more.

The timeline for that budget is five years, so I must disclose an interest.  I could be hired by an organization that could win a contract. 

The FAA has some websites detailing their proposal.  There's a radar section, which mentions 377 radar systems to replace.  They want to reduce from five old models, to two new.  The other part is facilities improvements. 

Reading between the lines, they have two problems, and one is that congress has been screwing them on more incremental upgrades for about twenty years.  Two, the average age of the radars is thirty six years old.  A twenty year old radar might be made in such a way that I might care to be involved in maintaining it for the next ten to twenty years.  Thirty years old?  Nope, I would say replace.  (That said, I'm both scared of high power systems, and scared of bureaucracy, so both paths are ones that I would personally not prefer to be in the middle of.) 

That said, spending to fix problems is the sort of thing that depends a wee bit on confidence in the people managing the money, and executing the projects or programs. 

I'm suspicious that it would only make sense to spend on a replacement after a political realignment and a theoretical and perhaps impossible level of resulting bureaucratic/leadership reforms. 

The FAA's 'need' for replacement is premised on air traffic not completely collapsing.  This is maybe a bit contradictory of the current regime's anti-economic and anti-human policies, to specifically include the 'electrification' of aviation. 

There's a theory that any idiot who supported this regime is stupid, and their economic ideas are bad and should be reversed.  The 'advanced air mobility' push may be by such idiots.  If the new air mobility scheme does not catastrophically implode, we would not only need to be able to maintain the old radar/ATC capabilities, but also develop new and more advanced ones. 

Anyway, the budget proposed mentions the hyphenated 'administration'.  It perhaps should be refused, and brought back up again when a legitimate government is again in power.