The award marks a significant step in a broader overhaul Congress funded at $12.5 billion — though Duffy has said the full project will require an additional $20 billion. The scale of the problem became public last spring when radar failures at a Philadelphia facility directing traffic into and out of Newark Liberty International Airport knocked out both primary and backup systems, triggering thousands of cancellations and delays at the major hub.
The Federal Aviation Administration selected defense contractor RTX and Spanish firm Indra on Monday to replace 612 radar systems that air traffic controllers rely on nationwide, as part of a multibillion-dollar effort to retire infrastructure that in some locations still runs on floppy discs and is maintained with spare parts sourced from eBay.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford announced the contracts, setting a target of completing the radar replacement by summer 2028. The administration set an ambitious broader goal of finishing the full air traffic control overhaul by the end of 2028, near the conclusion of President Donald Trump’s current term.
“Our radar network is outdated and long overdue for replacement. Many of the units have exceeded their intended service life, making them increasingly expensive to maintain and difficult to support,” Bedford said.
A system held together by workarounds
The 612 systems slated for replacement date to the 1980s. The FAA has been spending most of its $3 billion annual equipment budget keeping the aging network running rather than modernizing it, according to the Associated Press. Some equipment is no longer manufactured, leaving the agency to search for components through secondary markets including eBay.
The new systems will consolidate 14 different radar types currently in use across the country, which the FAA said will simplify future maintenance and repairs. The agency did not immediately provide a cost estimate for the radar replacement contracts.
Newark failures illustrated the stakes
The urgency of the replacement was made concrete last spring when technical failures knocked out radar serving the air traffic control facility in Philadelphia that directs planes into and out of Newark Liberty International Airport — twice. On at least one occasion, both the primary and backup radar systems failed simultaneously. The outages triggered thousands of flight cancellations and delays at the major hub airport.
The redundancy built into the national air traffic control system is designed to prevent exactly those cascading failures, but the age of the underlying equipment has eroded that buffer in parts of the network.
Funding and scope
Congress approved $12.5 billion for the broader air traffic control overhaul, and the FAA has committed more than $6 billion of that total to projects already underway. Duffy has said an additional $20 billion beyond the congressional appropriation will be needed to complete the project.
The agency has already replaced more than one-third of the outdated copper wires the system depended on with fiber optic lines. The FAA also hired Peraton, a national security contractor, to oversee the overhaul work.