Raytheon to Advance the FAA’s Air Traffic Terminal Automation System

The Raytheon Company was recently selected to improve the usability and reduce operational costs for the FAA’s Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System, a critical element in the efforts to modernize the national airspace system. Raytheon's STARS team, collaborating with the FAA's NextGen modernization program, aims to achieve a historic first—a single national software and hardware baseline across the country by the middle of 2020.

Air traffic controllers across the U.S. use STARS to provide safe and efficient aircraft spacing and sequencing guidance for more than 40,000 departing and arriving aircraft daily at more than 600 civilian and military airports. STARS pipes the radar data and flight plan information to controllers on high-resolution color displays.

To date, STARS has been deployed at 11 of the largest terminal radar approach control facilities that handle 80 percent of the air traffic in the U.S. including TRACONs in New York, Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, northern and southern California, St. Louis, Louisville, Minneapolis, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. Raytheon is in the process of being acquired by United Technologies in the summer of 2019.