Capabilities

Cooperative and Coordinated Digital Flight

A capability of cooperative and coordinated flight operations founded on a platform of secure digital information exchange, distributed authority, and intelligent onboard automation for flight path management in four dimensions (lateral, vertical, & time) to promote ubiquitous, safe, seamless, and efficient airspace utilization for all operators and with flexible architectures that enable operators to achieve their unique and diverse mission objectives with minimal restriction.

Attributes

- Operator leverages onboard trajectory automation, human-pilot mission oversight (onboard or remote), and collaboration with service providers to ensure flight safety and efficiency
- Integrates 4D flight path management functions seamlessly with coordination rules and cooperative intent-sharing to ensure traffic separation
- Leverages connectivity to an extensive and cyber-secure ecosystem of operational data
- Balances individual and system performance through transparent constraint policy
- Implemented through distributed automation for consistent, reliable, resilient, and scalable application

Data and Decision Support Marketplace

A data-and-reasoning fabric providing an open virtual ecosystem of secured software infrastructure, tools, protocols, governance and policies to implement, manage and operate data sharing and reasoning services across the entire span of mobility for real-time decision support.

Attributes

- Enables decisions to be made where the data exists
- Supports geographically dispersed, heterogeneous entities with low-latency requirements
- Self-sustaining and scalable access to existing data sources and solicitation of new sources
- Supports a transition toward machine-intelligence based decisions with human oversight
- Increases volume of digital data available with explicitly known applicability, quality, etc.
- Enables efficient and pervasive data discovery, aggregation, vetting, and data transactions
- Aggregation of micro-services where needed to ensure safety

Digital Airspace

A capability of airspace and air traffic management founded on a platform of digital information and automation to promote safe, seamless, and flexible airspace utilization for all operators and considers airspace constraints dynamically by digital means to ensure system performance and safety.

Attributes

- Highly federated to avoid the concentration of complexities found in a monolithic system and allow operators to take a more active role in airspace transformation
- Managing system for airspace constraints and exceptions, allowing flexibility where possible and applying structure only where necessary
- Designed using cybersecurity technologies to ensure availability, integrity, and confidentiality of all information, continuous monitoring to prevent vulnerabilities
- Dynamic constraints and disruption management, using predictive intelligent automation to proactively relax restrictions at the earliest time
- Collaborative with Digital Flight, partnering with advanced operator capabilities for time-based decision-making and precision conformance
- Real-time infrastructure and resource availability with inter-connected digital communication exchange, factoring in airport dynamics, aircraft performance and capabilities, and predictive weather
- Agile approach to demand/capacity balancing for all operations
- Balances total system optimization between global and local environments

Digital CNS Infrastructure

Digital infrastructure to provide adaptable and resource-aware digital communication, navigation, and surveillance (CNS). High performance digital communications securely and reliably distribute critical data and information. A combination of state-of-the-art distributed and centralized networks will enable collection and dissemination of airspace information to support and extend both new and existing airspace functions. This network will support seamless edge computing services, air-to-air connectivity, an air-ground connectivity. The precision of navigation and guidance will be increased using multiple high integrity navigational aid sources. Operators will be provided with a real-time operational view of both cooperative and non-cooperative traffic through a multi-sensor surveillance and tracking network approved for safety critical applications.

Attributes

- Expert Systems that balance resources, augment functionality, perceive hanges and adapt to changing conditions for service delivery assurance.
- Optimized spectrum utilization with intelligent agent assistance that evaluates information exchange demand and balances resources
- Adaptable, machine-learned, resource-aware and integrated system that connects any-to-many relevant systems, components and airspace users
- Vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure connectivity
- Integrates multi-link services delivering efficient, priority-based information exchanges
- Distributed connectivity via cloud network services
- Surveillance of airborne traffic with system wide information dissemination and coordination
- Precision navigation and guidance utilizing diverse navigational aid services
- Protected and resilient Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) with relative positioning system augmentation
- System-wide security for communication, navigation, and surveillance systems and networks

In-Time System-Wide Safety Assurance

A broad range of safety systems that proactively mitigate risks and demonstrate innovative solutions while ultimately ensuring safety to the community on the ground and in the airspace, employing services, functions, and capabilities that perform comprehensive monitoring and communication of the aviation system state, assessment of elevated risks, and mitigation actions to assure safety.

Attributes

- Increasingly scalable
- Decreasingly labor-intensive
- Dramatically increased responsiveness and timeliness
- Integrated risk management and safety assurance
- Automatically assured and adaptive in-time safety threat management

Intelligent and Adaptive Automation

Collective learning and dynamic information processing that augments operations and optimization of shared resources, with built-in resilience through intelligent and adaptive automation and applications, such as enhanced weather forecasting and predictive routing efficiency.

Attributes

- Steadily advancing in sophistication and breadth of possible applications
- Deployed within or across diverse architectures, including onboard, cloud, and ground systems
- Oriented toward micro-services rather than monolithic systems
- Ongoing service improvement by leveraging continuous data collection and machine-learning advances
- Bounded authority ensuring no compromise in safety as nascent systems mature

Micro-Services for Flight Operators

A diverse marketplace of appropriately authorized service providers distributed throughout the aviation ecosystem supporting flight operations with a wide range of micro-services to meet the varied needs of each operator in the local airspace.

Attributes

- Wide range of micro-services to meet each operator’s specific needs
- Complements the services the operator chooses to provide for themselves (self-services)
- Federated to meet NAS-level requirements while serving operators in the local environment
- Tightly interwoven in the data fabric of the aviation ecosystem
- Market driven to encourage continuous performance improvement
- Safety critical micro-services are FAA regulated to ensure service providers meet appropriate performance requirements
- Intelligent and adaptive automation applied by market leaders to provide standout service
- Aggregation of micro-services where needed to ensure safety

Operate from Essentially Anywhere, Anytime

A substantial expansion of the locations and operational conditions under which vehicles can access the National Airspace System, including expanded use of the nation’s existing uncontrolled aerodromes and flexible creation of new temporary and permanent aerodromes with minimal required permanent infrastructure, and support for low-visibility and high demand operations.

Attributes

- Enable aviation to serve the communities where people live and work
- Provides flexibility to set up temporary aerodromes to support short-term demand and special operations
- Enables new cost-effective aerodromes to service locations traditionally serviced by ground transportation
- Enables new cost-effective aerodromes to service locations traditionally serviced by ground transportation
- Unlocks capacity at thousands of existing aerodromes, unmatched since the advent of GPS approaches
- Equitably manages vertiport constraints, which are communicated to operators
- Flexibly handles high demand using services that coordinate with neighboring aerodromes
- Enables operations in VMC and IMC by providing information on local atmospheric conditions and surrounding air traffic
- Robust to off-nominal situations by providing real-time information on closures or capacity reductions and facilitating vehicle diversions, lost link operations, and emergencies
- Interoperability with evolving vehicle and ground infrastructure designs to continue expanding airspace access.

Systems of Systems Architecture and Methods

A suite of capabilities to super-integrate aviation and other expanding complex systems of the mid-21st century, inclusive of socio-economic-technical-ecological considerations for adaptive realization of sustainable, resilient aviation.

Attributes

- Establishes machine-intelligent methodology to integrate ecosystems beyond technical domains
- Standardizes visual machine-based capabilities to optimize architectures and outcomes
- Tools to enable total system optimization balancing global and local needs with performance metrics
- Automates model-based approach for adaptive behavior to anticipate risk and conflicting independent interests, objectives, purpose, and requirements
- Auto-architects application path over multiple lifecycles with evolving elements being implemented asynchronously
- Technical methods and standards to integrate, verify, transition, implement, and validate
- Speeds unique outcomes that none of the constituent systems can accomplish on its own

Capabilities

Cooperative and Coordinated Digital Flight

Data and Decision Support Marketplace

Digital Airspace

Digital CNS Infrastructure

In-Time System-Wide Safety Assurance

Intelligent and Adaptive Automation

Micro-Services for Flight Operators

Operate from Essentially Anywhere, Anytime

Systems of Systems Architecture and Methods

Provide input or suggest a capability or sub-capability.

Capabilities

Cooperative and Coordinated Digital Flight

Data and Decision Support Marketplace

Digital Airspace

Digital CNS Infrastructure

In-Time System-Wide Safety Assurance

Intelligent and Adaptive Automation

Micro-Services for Flight Operators

Operate from Essentially Anywhere, Anytime

Systems of Systems Architecture and Methods

Provide input or suggest a capability
or sub-capability.