Both the House and Senate Aviation Subcommittees this week held matching hearings at which Federal Aviation Administrator Bryan Bedford briefed them on the status of the FAA’s efforts to modernize the air traffic control system.

Bedford appeared before the House on December 16 (video and testimony here) and before the Senate on December 17 (video and testimony here).

The House hearing was chaired by Aviation Subcommittee chairman Troy Nehls (R-TX), who led a good hearing in that he asked all the major questions quickly and efficiently in the first 5 minutes.

• Nehls asked about section 373 of the National Defense Authorization Act, which controversially rolled back restrictions on the Pentagon’s ability to run helicopter missions in the DC area with automatic safety equipment turned off. Bedford said that while he was not supposed to comment on pending legislation, no one at the FAA had seen that language before it appeared in the NDAA, and that it his (and Secretary Duffy’s) intent to maintain the safety gains made since then. The following day, Bedford told Senate Commerce chairman Ted Cruz (R-TX) that while he was not supposed to comment on pending legislation, as a former airline pilot and current private pilot, “any additional situational awareness in the cockpit is a welcome initiative.” He did point out that, as far as the universal ADS-B requirement in section 4 of the bill goes, some general aviation pilots do have issues with the privacy issues and/or the cost of compliance with the mandate.
• Regarding the $12.5 billion for air traffic control capital upgrades provided by the budget reconciliation bill enacted in July 2025, Bedford told both chambers the goal was to “think slow, then move fast.” He told Senate Aviation Subcommittee chairman Jerry Moran (R-KS) that the first $6 to $6.5 billion of the money will be spent on telecommunications and radar upgrades and should be obligated by the end of fiscal year 2026. On telco, Bedford said he came into the FAA and they had a 20-year plan for copper to fiber conversion that had started in 2018. This has now been upgraded so it will be complete by the third quarter of 2027. He also said they were down to their three finalists for radar system replacement selection. When Moran asked how the $5 billion in Facilities and Equipment funding in the House version of the DOT Appropriations Act for 2026 ($2 billion more than normal) would help, Bedford described the regular F&E budget as maintaining the existing system and preventing it from falling apart, rather than actually helping create a new system. Bedford also told Nehls that the 180-day status update on the $12.5 billion, due in early February, will be submitted on time. Looking long-term, once all the telco and radars have been replaced, they can start addressing computer power. Bedford said that right now the ATC system has 350 different computers at 350 different facilities that don’t really communicate, and the eventual long-term goal is to replace them with a truly integrated computer system that takes advantage of cloud computing (which would take $6 billion of the money needed after the current $12.5 billion is spent).
• On December 4, DOT announced the selection of a prime integrator for ATC transformation, Peraton. Peraton is a fairly young company, assembled by a venture capital firm by merging Harris Corporation’s government IT business with Northrop Grumman’s federal IT and mission support business, adding several other similar firms since then through acquisition. Nehls asked Bedford what guardrails were in place to regulate Peraton’s actions, and Nehls said the goal was not to allow this to become “another NextGen boondoggle” and to get the upgrades done on time with off-the-shelf technology. Bedford said the FAA lacks internal competence on modernization, particularly TDMI/analog to VOIP/digital and similar transitions, and Peraton brings that. At the Senate hearing, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) sounded doubtful, saying that the three-year timeline being placed on Peraton to do its work seemed arbitrary and “setting the integrator up to fail.”

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) asked about air traffic controller workforce, and was told that the number of certified, trained controllers has increased from 10,600 to 10,700. This is not enough, and he said that they had met Secretary Duffy’s goal of hiring 2,000 new controller trainees, but that there is normally a high washout rate, and this went up even more when between 400 and 500 quit during the recent government shutdown. (Bedford noted that this time, the FAA Academy stayed open during the shutdown, but the prospect of working in a job where they might be expected to go without pay for a month at a time scared some of them off.) Bedford says there are 1,000 more trainees in the pipeline than there were one year ago, but it’s a two- to three-year training cycle.