August 27- The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has selected Harris Corp. of Melborne, Fla., to support an essential element of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). The NextGen-enabling program is called the National Airspace System (NAS) Voice System (NVS).
NVS replaces the 40-year-old, legacy voice switches with a modern and flexible operational voice capability. NVS supports ground-to-ground voice communications between air traffic controllers and air-to-ground voice communications between controllers and aircraft. The FAA will deploy NVS in air traffic control towers, terminal and en route facilities, and future NextGen air traffic control facilities.
“This system is another example of the critical role that interconnecting technologies serve as part of NextGen,” said FAA Acting Administrator Michael Huerta. “NVS will help ensure more efficient and reliable voice communications between our air traffic facilities as we maintain the world’s safest aviation system.”
NVS will take advantage of modern router-based telecommunications technologies that enable the FAA to transition to a NAS-wide networked system. The current legacy voice switches operate independently at individual facilities and some have been in place since the early 1980s. NVS is a major modernization initiative that will enable the FAA to route, monitor and share information from one facility to another. It also offers the flexibility to allow the FAA to shift controller workload between facilities as needed.
NVS will support airspace redesign, dynamic re-sectorization and offloading, and business continuity planning to protect against a loss of communications at air traffic control facilities. With the implementation of NVS, the FAA will have enhanced visibility and control over communications resources and will be able to manage them as a unified system versus individual platforms.
The NVS contract has a five-year base and five two-year options, with a potential total value of $291.6 million.
