Jan 5 (Reuters) - The United States awarded contracts on Monday to RTX Corp and Spain's Indra Sistemas to supply new radars for its aging air traffic control system, a major step in a multi-billion-dollar overhaul, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement.
The awards are a key part of a $12.5 billion plan Congress approved last year to overhaul the nation's air traffic control system. The effort follows decades of complaints over airport congestion and technology failures and has gained
urgency after a recent series of high-profile safety incidents.
Duffy's statement did not say how much the contracts were worth, but U.S. Federal Aviation Administration head Bryan Bedford said last month the agency is committing $6 billion by year-end on air traffic control telecom infrastructure and radar surveillance systems.
The agency has said another $20 billion will be needed to complete the full air traffic control system upgrade.
"While our air travel system is the safest in the world, most of our radars date back to the 1980s. It's unacceptable," Duffy said.
The Federal Aviation Administration's air traffic control network's woes have been years in the making, but a rush of high-profile mishaps, near-misses and a catastrophic crash last January between a U.S. Army helicopter and regional American Airlines jet that killed 67 has spiked public alarm.
The contracts will contribute to replacing up to 612 radars by June 2028 with modern, commercially available surveillance radars. Replacements are scheduled to begin this quarter and will prioritize high-traffic areas, the statement said.
The project will install replacement surface radars at 44 airports, acquire 27,625 radios and add 110 weather stations in Alaska.
A 2023 report said the Federal Aviation Administration communications system had been outdated for years and the agency could no longer get spare parts for many systems.
In November, the FAA said it has picked Peraton, a national security company owned by Veritas Capital, as project manager to overhaul the aging U.S. air traffic control system.
(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
