Lessons That NextGen Can Learn From the Telegraph (and the ARPANET/Internet)
The history of communications is an interesting one in which the past repeats itself. This is why an analysis of NextGen and how it might evolve (if it is allowed to) should be of interest to the entire aviation industry. A number of the early attempts at communicating information have interesting parallels to NextGen (much like SESAR and other such air traffic management systems being rolled out internationally), and some of these highlight potential paths to take, or at least strategies to employ.
Civilization has had some manner of long-distance communication since the first warlord needed to communicate with outlying troops. From signal fires, smoke signals, reflected light, and homing pigeons to the Pony Express, mankind has always pushed the envelope on increasing the speed of sharing information. Not only has the communication speed increased over time, but the volume of information has also grown with it.
While it may not seem as if a direct correlation exists between general-purpose communications and a dedicated use mechanism such as NextGen, there is much more to this than initially meets the eye. NextGen is a new paradigm on how we manage our air traffic management via the use of wireless data communications; hence, it is a new network. Every preceding large network,starting with the telegraph, the telephone system, radio, television, and Internet has evolved past the dreams of its early adopters to encompass many other functions and capabilities. In order to know where you are going, it helps to understand how you got there.
Telegraph: Not Only the First Electronic Network, but Text Messaging, too
The first text messages were not sent by teenagers, but by highly-trained operators sitting in cramped cubicle-like offices all around the world (apparently not much has changed in regards to office space), hunched over their pre-iPhone devices and ignoring all those around them as they tapped out their messages (again… not much has changed). The early telegraph systems quickly evolved from a transmit-only mechanism over short distances to a transmit-and-record service which the United States and Western Europe came to depend upon, before it was supplanted by the telephone. It even evolved as the first means of ship-to-shore electronic communications. Samuel Morse was the Steve Jobs of his day.
What is important to note regarding the telegraph is how it spawned many new developments which were ahead of their time, some of which were not fully digested or utilized for many years. This should be an interesting lesson for the FAA in regards to managing NextGen. The earliest fax machine was called a ‘recording telegraph’ and was able to transmit images, and over time it evolved to inexpensive devices which used digital data compression technology originally developed for satellite communications (although this progress took more than 100 years). The IATA Type B-compliant networks administered by SITA and ARINC evolved from a telegraph-technology base of teleprinters and radioteletype transmissions. Another key development of note is that routing of messages was first automated via ‘telex’ machines (at a speedy rate of 45+ baud), and not by computer-based networks.
Essentially, the early use of the telegraph evolved from government/military operations to single-company (not connected with other providers) services, to a global service which supported aviation, railroad and maritime uses. It spawned the telephone and computer networks, notably the Internet.
ARPANET and Internet
Skipping over the telephone system due to its primary use as a voice-technology based medium, the next set of data transmission technologies come to us as another government-sponsored project, the ARPANET packet switching research network (the Internet just calls it ‘dad’). Much has been written on these topics, but it worth mentioning that the initial use of the ARPANET was not intended to update long-lost acquaintances of your current activities (and what you had for dinner) or to find a date, which seem to be the primary uses of the Internet today. The evolution of a research network intended to serve as a small set of services to a small set of people in a limited number of locations has evolved to become a worldwide set of networks in which you can almost instantaneously send and receive large amounts of information anywhere, execute applications from servers located anywhere, and do this via mobile devices. Essentially, this is NextGen in a nutshell.
I doubt that anyone at ARPA/DARPA or any of the research institutions could have foreseen even a small portion of the eventual use of the Internet during the initial startup of the ARPANET. Due to the U.S. government opening up the closed ARPANET to an open network over time, and the adoption of it by commercial interests (and especially entrepreneurial entities), it has come to change the world. Perhaps it was fortuitous that DARPA had control over this initially and allowed its eventual commercialization (as DARPA and its predecessor agency, ARPA, are prone to do with cutting-edge developments), else it may never have spawned the use of e-mail (and I would never receive daily messages from supposed Canadian pharmacies trying to sell me generic Viagra), or the worldwide Web. Think of all of the jobs and companies and the resulting innovations this has spawned.
What Does This Have To Do With NextGen?
As you are well aware, the FAA is slowly rolling out NextGen with foot dragging from the government relative to funding, and to reluctance by some of the aviation community in regards to adoption. This is a normal reaction to a new paradigm in any industry anywhere in the world.
Essentially, we are replacing an aged manually-intensive system based upon radar and voice communications with a (rather) automated data-driven system based upon GPS satellite signals and automated aircraft positional information. The projected return-on-investment (ROI) is based upon being better able to manage larger amounts of aircraft in the sky, route them more directly, and increase the safety of all. All of this is needed, and all of it should be able to be accomplished (at least once the security concerns of GPS and ADS-B are addressed).
As the telegraph, telephone and Internet have demonstrated, we can expect NextGen to evolve as well. It can be argued that NextGen is more of a closed system (primarily for safety concerns) than the other examples, but that is not necessarily true. It can be demonstrated that each of the other mechanisms could have been considered closed systems initially, but each of these changed course in unforeseen ways.
Innovation can only flourish where the opportunity for it to do so is welcomed, else inventors and dreamers will not push the envelope and help a mechanism evolve. Thus, the FAA must take lessons learned from these earlier efforts and allow for industry to make use of NextGen to solve industry business problems (or create them and then solve them). Since we will able to receive automated up-to-date, semi-real-time positional (and other) information from a majority of aircraft in a few years, something which was not available in the recent past, we will be able to apply big data and mobile-driven applications from this new set of information rather soon.
Gimme an Example of This, O Seer
I can almost sense some skepticism from you readers, and rightfully so. Any idea which cannot be defended in a good debate cannot be considered worthwhile. I have outlined a number of potentially viable ideas which might come about (and I might be calling a venture capitalist to fund some of this myself):
1. Drone-supplied traffic management. With the forthcoming invasion of UAVs entering the airspace in 2015, one of the expected uses is by local governments for various purposes. One of these could make for better traffic congestion reporting by providing visuals of key highways and interchanges. We already have Web sites which have average speeds reported, helping commuters know where to avoid (if they check a computer before they leave for a commute), or via traffic-data-enabled GPS devices in cars. Both of these are barely trusted, as I can personally attest to while living in Los Angeles. I have learned to not always have full confidence in either one of these, since they do not provide perfectly correct data (and I end up being stuck in a traffic jam I could have potentially routed around). If only I could launch an app on my smartphone or my vehicle’s infotainment system (which connects to my phone’s cellular provider network) and VIEW a real-time video feed from a drone that did nothing but fly over key highways, and make a better traffic-avoidance decision on whether the carpool lanes are also jammed. NextGen creates the capability for such drones to operate safely in such an environment, and such services could potentially be provided by competing commercial drone operation companies (AvoidTraffic.com versus RouteMe.com).
2. Another drone example, fire-suppression updates to homeowners and others in a fire area.Imagine if your community or region (or some commercial provider) could supply you with an app that provided the exact location of all fire-fighting aircraft and where they are dropping water or chemicals, as well as firefighters and their ground vehicles. (OK, this is not part of NextGen, but it is a key part of the my app: ‘Where’s The Fire, Dude?’). If you are located near an area where a major brushfire has broken out, this type of near-real-time information could be life saving. Such aircraft could easily be augmented to report their exact coordinates of water drops, so anyone could see that there is a major fire and its potential course. Imagine if video feeds could also be sent by the aircraft to ground networks, which then send this out to anyone in an affected area. Drones could also be used to assess the damage quickly once such fires were extinguished and speed up aid to those affected. Once again, not all of this is purely enabled by NextGen, but it plays a part by enabling the aviation portion to be viable.
3. 3-D Views of Air Traffic. Think Star Trek.Imagine if an air traffic controller or air force officer could stand in a room and view all current aircraft, with the projected course, in a three-dimensional visual manner happening all around them as they walked through it. Maybe this is already possible in the defense world (mum is the word), but this would bring a more pragmatic means to view aircraft in flight or on the taxiways. Man is a visual creature, and if a picture is worth a thousand words, a 3-D visualization is worth a gigabyte of data. Imagine if airline operation centers could visualize and manage their fleets in such a manner, and have current weather conditions projected into such a simulation — even Captain Kirk would be impressed. Air traffic management would become an even more interesting career choice.
4. Gaming applications. In the past 20 years, gaming companies have driven the great advances in the visual rendering of animations, flight simulations and realistic graphics. At first, the initial developments focused on the software graphics engines which drove more fluid-like movement by which to attract gamers to ever-more realistic games (if you consider flying into alien worlds, being attacked by mutants of various sizes and fighting with all sorts of interesting weapons realistic). The next set of developments focused on connecting gamers around the world onto Internet-based games in which they compete against one another. How long will it take for one of the in-flight entertainment service providers to team with a gaming company to offer flight-based gaming in which one aircraft’s passengers compete with other flights? ADS-B data from other aircraft (which would be provided by the aircraft’s avionics into the integrated communications suite, which interconnects to an IFE system) could be used in the game (not generating such info, but, simply using it), along with GPS coordinates as part of gaming competition. This is much better than watching old reruns of “Everybody Loves Raymond” on a long flight. Your taxpayer dollars could help augment commercial gaming and IFE services which generate tax revenue — so you can qualify your $20 fee for playing “Sky Wars” on that cross-country flight to not only helping justify NextGen, but also in paying down the national debt. How patriotic of you.
5. The Next Great Idea. Can you imagine what some entrepreneur will think of? Imagine how someone thought of sending an image over a very slow, limited telegraph system (and how this eventually spawned fax machines, e-mail, the Web, etc.), or using a land-based wired system to develop a means by which to send wireless signals to a ship at sea. Imagine the number of companies providing any one of thousands of services which would not exist if not for the Internet. Such developments are impossible to predict in detail, but you can predict that such innovations will happen. Now that we will be able to better track aircraft in flight (and on the taxiways), and aircraft can react to other aircraft more readily without third-party intervention (if you have ADS-B In), the next generation of avionics and ground-support systems will evolve to not only make better use of such capabilities over time, but also use those capabilities in novel ways. Service providers will be able to create novel products based upon aviation and satellite data. All that needs to be in place for this to happen is a capability for such ideas to flourish.
The FAA Needs to Keep an Open Mind
For any of these magnificent ideas to happen, the FAA needs to support and allow novel uses of NextGen and related technologies. The surest way to keeping costs high and to fritter away the benefits is to maintain tight control of how ADS, GPS, etc., are used. The telegraph became ubiquitous in the U.S. and industrialized Europe due to competition and the how new ideas were introduced over time, which was eventually surpassed by voice communications, and then the pendulum swung back to the data-driven Internet. The clear lesson is that innovation widens the use of any product or service, and the more accepting the product or service is of this, the more valuable it becomes.
Follow the path blazed by the telegraph and ARPANET/Internet and embrace outside influence and a creative destruction of the status quo (even as the status quo is just emerging). If there is one thing that the U.S. is good at, it is finding ways to exploit new resources in way previously unimagined. Use that national trait to boost NextGen, even as it might (temporarily) undermine it. Remember, an idea which cannot survive a strong challenge ... well, you know.
John Pawlicki is CEO and principal of OPM Research. He also works with Information Tool Designers (ITD), where he consults to the DOT’s Volpe Center, handling various technology and cyber security projects for the FAA and DHS. He managed and deployed various products over the years, including the launch of CertiPath (with world’s first commercial PKI bridge). John has also been part of industry efforts at the ATA/A4A, AIA and other industry groups, and was involved in the effort to define and allow the use of electronic FAA 8130-3 forms, as well as in defining digital identities with PKI. His recent publication, ‘Aerospace Marketplaces Report’ which analyzed third-party sites that support the trading of aircraft parts is available on OPMResearch.com as a PDF download, or a printed book version is available on Amazon.com.