'State of the art' air traffic control system will be unveiled in the 'next couple days,' Duffy says
A brand-new "state of the art" air traffic control system will be unveiled by the Trump administration in the "next couple days," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told "Fox & Friends" Wednesday.
President Donald Trump will get the "first sneak peek" before the system is presented to Congress as part of a funding request, according to Duffy.
"We're going to have an announcement in the next couple days. We are going to have a brand new system. Again, our system is 25, 30 years old. We use copper wires, floppy disks. I mean... it's atrocious, the system we use," Duffy said. "It's safe, but we're seeing the cracks of age. So we're going to build a brand new state of the art system."
"We're going to go from copper lines to fiber lines. Our radar, some of the newest models that we have date back to like 1982. We're going to have brand new radar, brand new terminals for air traffic controllers, we're going to have sensors on runways," Duffy continued. "So they don't have to stand in the tower and look out with binoculars. And oftentimes the controller's views are impeded. On their screens they'll be able to see where airplanes are at, on the tarmac. So again, top technology that's going to be deployed."
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Duffy said the key to upgrading the nation’s air traffic control system is "speed."
"It's not that we don't know that we've had a problem with air traffic control, but it takes too long. And then technology changes, money changes, administrations change. So we have to do this really fast. And so the Congress has to give us all the money up front," he told "Fox & Friends."
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"We have some SpaceX engineers that are helping us and others, to help us deploy -- again this fantastic system," he also said. "And so we're going to roll our plan out. Again, I'm talking to the president this week. Give him the first sneak peek, and then we're going to roll it out to Congress and hopefully get the money quick."
Duffy previously said upgrading the system could take up to four years to complete.