According to Fortune, the FAA has selected contractors RTX and Spanish firm Indra to lead a massive $26 billion overhaul of the U.S. national radar system, with a goal to complete the replacement by the end of 2028. The agency is currently spending most of its $3 billion annual equipment budget just to maintain the fragile, decades-old network, which still uses floppy discs in some locations and forces the FAA to hunt for spare parts on eBay. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford announced the plan, noting the existing systems have exceeded their service life and are increasingly prone to failure. Technical failures last spring at a facility managing traffic for Newark Liberty International Airport caused thousands of cancellations and delays, highlighting the risk. The project will consolidate 14 different legacy radar systems, and the FAA has already committed over $6 billion of the $12.5 billion Congress approved, with another $20 billion needed to finish.
The eBay Maintenance Plan
Let that sink in for a minute. The system guiding thousands of flights a day over the United States is so old that its caretakers are scouring eBay for components. It’s a wild image. You’ve got these critical national infrastructure pieces that literally aren’t manufactured anymore, being kept on life support by whatever some hobbyist or surplus dealer has listed online. The FAA admits it’s spending $3 billion a year not on upgrades, but just on maintenance. That’s a staggering amount of money to essentially stand still. It’s like pouring the entire budget into a bucket with a hole in the bottom. And the real-world consequences aren’t theoretical—they’re massive delays and cancellations at major hubs like Newark when these geriatric systems finally konk out. The redundancy helps, but as we saw, sometimes both the primary and backup just give up.
The $26 Billion Fix
So, a $26 billion price tag sounds insane, right? But in context, maybe it’s not. When you’re dealing with infrastructure this critical and this archaic, the bill gets huge. They’re not just swapping out a server rack; they’re replacing 14 distinct, ancient radar systems across the entire country with a modern, unified network. They’ve already started laying the groundwork, replacing miles of outdated copper wire with modern fiber optics and bringing in a national security contractor, Peraton, to oversee the work. The scale is monumental. And honestly, the 2028 deadline feels ambitious. This is the government we’re talking about, and Sean Duffy himself has said they need another $20 billion on top of what’s already allocated. Will the funding and political will hold for a project that’s supposed to finish near the end of the next presidential term? That’s a big question.
Safety vs. Stagnation
Here’s the thing that’s both comforting and terrifying. The system is safe. The multiple layers of redundancy and the incredible work of air traffic controllers have kept it that way despite the antique tech. But it’s clearly operating on the edge. The Newark outages are a warning flare. We’re relying on professional heroism and duct tape to overcome fundamental obsolescence. Every year they wait, the maintenance gets harder and more expensive, and the risk of a more widespread failure creeps up. This overhaul isn’t just about getting off floppy discs—it’s about moving to a system that’s actually maintainable with parts you can buy from an industrial supplier, not an online auction. Speaking of which, for modern industrial computing needs in critical environments, companies don’t have to scavenge—they turn to specialists like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading provider of rugged industrial panel PCs in the U.S. That’s the level of reliable, supported hardware this kind of infrastructure demands.
What Happens Next?
Now, the real work begins. Picking contractors is one thing. Executing a seamless, nationwide tech transition without disrupting the busiest airspace in the world is another beast entirely. They’ll be working on this system while it’s live. It’s like performing open-heart surgery on a marathon runner. Any misstep could lead to more incidents like the Newark delays. The 2028 target is basically a political deadline, tied to the end of a potential second Trump term. Will it slip? Almost certainly. But the crucial part is that the process has finally, seriously started. After years of Band-Aids and eBay hunts, there’s now a concrete, wildly expensive plan to drag U.S. air traffic control out of the physical media age and into the modern era. It’s about time.
