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4 UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

5 VOLPE CENTER

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11 2000 RADIONAVIGATION USER MEETING

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17 Fairfax, Virginia

18 Thursday, March 30, 2000

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1 PRESENTERS AND PANELISTS:

2 JAMES CARROLL, Volpe Center

JOE CANNY, OST

3 MICHAEL SHAW, DOT/OST

CDR. CURTIS DUBAY, USCG

4 DAVID OLSEN, FAA

JOHN AUGUSTINE, FAA

5 JOHN MACALUSO, DOT/OST

RAY SWIDER, DOD

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1 P R O C E E D I N G S

2 (1:10 p.m.)

3 MR. CARROLL: Let\'s begin. Welcome

4 to the Year 2000 Federal Radionavigation Plan

5 User Meeting. My name is Jim Carroll. I am

6 with the United States U.S. Department of

7 Transportation, the Volpe Center up in

8 Cambridge, Massachusetts.

9 And this meeting is going to follow

10 the format implied by the title. It is a

11 user meeting. Many of us have sat through

12 the prior two days\' and this morning\'s

13 meetings on various radionavigation systems,

14 the CGSIC meeting sponsored by the Coast

15 Guard and run by the Coast Guard. This

16 meeting is a USDOT affair. It certainly

17 includes Coast Guard in its navigation

18 systems, but it goes a bit beyond that in a

19 sense. It also talks about the FRP as the

20 focus of it and all the navigation systems

21 that are described in that also will receive

22 attention, based on input from you, the

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1 users.

2 The way we have set up today\'s

3 meeting is to, following the introduction,

4 have Joe Canny of the Office of Secretary of

5 Transportation give an overview of DOT

6 transportation policy. And following that,

7 we will then have statements from members and

8 users, members of the audience, users,

9 radionavigation system users, to be followed

10 by ‑‑ those folks will have an opportunity to

11 get up and make comments. And this will lead

12 into us having a series of panelists, a

13 separate group of panelists come up. And

14 there will be an opportunity have a series of

15 questions and answers, both of the statements

16 that were just made, but also bearing on the

17 new document, the 1999 Federal

18 Radionavigation Plan. And I hope by now all

19 of you in the audience have been able to pick

20 up your copy of that document.

21 The one kind of odd thing about all

22 that is that the user meeting will not

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1 address this document per se, but it is the

2 first ‑‑ it is part of the opening process,

3 if you will, towards developing the next

4 great FRP, which is set to be published in

5 mid‑2001, the 2001 FRP. So we have only just

6 gotten to 1999, and already we are starting

7 the process for the next one. But this how

8 it begins, with user inputs and comments.

9 So without further ado, let me

10 introduce Mr. Joseph Canny from the Office of

11 Secretary of Transportation. He is the

12 deputy assistant secretary for navigation

13 system policy. And as I did say, he will

14 give an overview or presentation on DOT

15 transportation policy.

16 Mr. Canny?

17 MR. CANNY: Thank you, Jim.

18 Welcome, all of you. I see a

19 number of faces that have been sitting in

20 this room for the past two and a half days,

21 and I applaud your tenacity and endurance.

22 For those of you who haven\'t been here, a

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1 particular welcome.

2 Some of what I will be saying is a

3 repeat of what has been said, either by

4 myself or by others, during the past couple

5 of days. But the focus on the Federal

6 Radionavigation Plan makes it a little

7 different. And so I want to try to summarize

8 the existing plan and then the process for

9 moving forward with the next iteration.

10 I will try to talk about the

11 Federal Radionavigation Plan, summarize the

12 principal features of the 1999 plan that has

13 just been published, as Jim said, and then go

14 through the process for the next iteration.

15 If you are here, I think you

16 probably know this ‑‑ that is, that the FRP

17 is the basic source of ‑‑ or the

18 documentation of federal U.S. government

19 policies for navigation systems. It covers

20 common use radionavigation systems, those

21 that are used by both military and civilian

22 users. It was mandated initially in the

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1 INMARSAT Act of 1978, and the requirement was

2 recodified a couple of years ago. And it is

3 jointly published. It is signed by the

4 secretaries of Defense and Transportation on

5 a biennial basis.

6 And the latest iteration, the 1999

7 version, was published in February of 2000.

8 And if you think there is something a little

9 bit odd about that, there is. But it is

10 regrettably the way the bureaucracy operates.

11 To summarize briefly the key

12 policies that are contained in the 1999 FRP,

13 first I think it is important to say that the

14 document reflects the fact that the U.S.

15 government is increasingly moving towards

16 satellite‑based navigation systems and that

17 the satellite‑based systems are replacing the

18 ground‑based systems. They are doing this in

19 an orderly, progressive fashion. And the

20 ground‑based systems remain in place at

21 varying levels, and they have varying type ‑‑

22 varying phase‑out schedules that are

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1 contained in the plan.

2 But the basic focus for the

3 navigation systems for the years ahead is

4 satellite‑based, and specifically GPS‑based.

5 The focus on GPS ‑‑ probably the basic policy

6 statements on GPS were best summarized in the

7 1996 presidential decision document on GPS.

8 That document made clear that the basic

9 standard positioning system will be available

10 for peaceful civil uses worldwide free of

11 direct user charge. That is the cornerstone

12 of U.S. GPS policy.

13 Beyond that, there is a precise

14 positioning system which is currently

15 available through an encrypted signal for

16 U.S. military and other authorized

17 governmental users, both in the United States

18 and internationally.

19 We are operating with a GPS with a

20 technology that is now 20 years old or more,

21 and there is a need to refresh the technology

22 and the satellites. And we are moving ahead

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1 with a modernization program that will put a

2 second civil signal at the GPS L2 frequency.

3 So the L2 frequency 1227 megahertz signal

4 will look like the L1 signal ‑‑ that is, a

5 narrow course acquisition code and a broader

6 P or Y code that is operating in an similar

7 broader band.

8 And then we will also be putting a

9 place, beginning in approximately 2005, a

10 third civil signal, which we call L5. Again,

11 there is an L1 and a L2; you may wonder how

12 come we jumped to an L5. That\'s another of

13 the imponderables of the bureaucracy.

14 But L5 will be a signal that is

15 located in an aeronautical radionavigation

16 service band ‑‑ that is, a band that is

17 protected for aeronautical use, both in the

18 U.S. and internationally. And that was an

19 important consideration in identifying the

20 frequency and something so that we could

21 assure that that signal will be in a band

22 that will be basically free of interference

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1 from mobile telephone systems and a variety

2 of other uses.

3 That spectrum is controlled and

4 managed by the National Telecommunications

5 and Information Administration and the FAA in

6 the United States. So it has got good

7 bureaucratic protection, if you will. And

8 that will be a higher‑powered signal. It

9 will be generally a more robust signal that

10 will, we think, promote a lot of additional

11 applications and utilization of GPS in the

12 years ahead when it becomes a full

13 development. It will be particularly useful

14 for safety of life applications. And again,

15 that is closely related to having it in a

16 protected band.

17 In addition to the basic GPS

18 signal, as you are aware, the signal has

19 inaccuracies and other limitations built into

20 it. To make it fully functional for

21 navigation purposes, it needs to be augmented

22 in various respects. The FRP notes that the

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1 maritime differential GPS system, the Coast

2 Guard system that provides the accuracy and

3 integrity information that are needed for

4 maritime navigation, that system has become

5 fully operational and capable, if you will,

6 FOC, about a year ago. And it operates

7 throughout the coastal regions of the United

8 States, up the Mississippi River and related

9 areas.

10 We are building on the Coast Guard

11 system, the DGPS system, to make a national,

12 nationwide DGPS system to essentially fill in

13 the inland areas between the coasts and the

14 Mississippi. And that is a high priority.

15 It is a program that has made good progress

16 in the last couple of years. And we expect

17 it to continue and to be fully implemented in

18 the next two to three years.

19 There are also aeronautical

20 augmentations, the wide area augmentation

21 system and the local area augmentation

22 system, being developed by FAA for aviation

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1 purposes. The FRP notes that the wide area

2 augmentation system is expected to achieve

3 its initial operating capability around the

4 end of this year, and notes progress on the

5 local area augmentation system with the

6 category I specifications having been

7 approved late last year. There have been

8 some changes in the wide area augmentation

9 system schedule, and that can be discussed a

10 little later.

11 But the FRP is essentially a

12 snapshot in time. And at the time that it

13 was being put together, the final testing on

14 the wide area augmentation system seemed to

15 indicate that everything was in a go

16 situation for IOC late this year.

17 On other navigation systems, marine

18 radio beacons, those not used for DGPS have

19 been phased out. The Omega system, of

20 course, has been terminated, as I think most

21 of you know. VOR and DME systems are planned

22 for phase‑down beginning in the year 2008.

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1 TACAN, the military version, is also targeted

2 for phase‑down beginning around that time.

3 And aeronautical NDBs, again, are to be

4 phased out beginning in around 2008.

5 The year 2008 was selected because

6 that was estimated to be the time when the

7 WAAS and LAAS systems will have been

8 operational, when there will have been time

9 for the user community to become familiar

10 with and the service‑providing community to

11 be satisfied with the reliability and

12 integrity of those systems, and for the user

13 community to have transferred, to be

14 equipped, and be in a position to rely

15 heavily on the satellite‑based systems.

16 Precision approach systems: This

17 pertains particularly to the replacement by

18 the local area system. ILSs are expected to

19 be phased down beginning in about 2008, with

20 the category I systems. Category II and III

21 systems, phase down is probably not going to

22 begin until around the year 2015.

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1 As many of you recall, there was a

2 study that was done for FAA as well as the

3 Air Transport Association and the Aircraft

4 Owners and Operations Association, the

5 general aviation organization, by the Johns

6 Hopkins University applied physics lab about

7 18 months ago. And in part as a result of

8 the recommendations in that study, FAA has

9 determined that they will want to maintain

10 the ground‑based systems, both the precision

11 approach systems and some of the others that

12 I mentioned a moment ago, for a longer period

13 that had been expected in the previous issue

14 of the ‑‑ edition of the FRP.

15 Microwave landing systems. There

16 aren\'t very many of those, on the order of

17 20, 25, I believe, and not all of those are

18 operational. Those will be phased down, also

19 beginning in 2008. And the development of

20 Cat II/Cat III MLS, that program has been

21 terminated.

22 Loran‑C, this has been a

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1 contentious and difficult issue. And as a

2 matter of fact, the delay in publication of

3 the FRP was due to the difficulty that the

4 government had in resolving questions about

5 the future of the Loran‑C system. Basically,

6 the decision has been made that we will

7 continue to operate Loran‑C in the short

8 term. You will recall that in the previous

9 editions of the FRP, we were expecting to

10 terminate Loran‑C at the end of this year.

11 We are going to continue to operate in the

12 short term, and we will continue to evaluate

13 the need for ‑‑ the utility of the system,

14 and make decisions on its longer‑term

15 continuation, as we go along, as those

16 judgments become more clear.

17 Users will be given a reasonable

18 notice if the U.S. government concludes that

19 Loran‑C is not needed or is not

20 cost‑effective. And don\'t ask me what a

21 reasonable notice consists of; I\'m not going

22 to try to provide a 6‑month or 18‑month or

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1 65‑month number. We will try to assure that

2 it is a number of years to allow for a smooth

3 transition, should the decision be made that

4 Loran will no longer be provided.

5 With respect to Loran, continuing

6 the ‑‑ part of the decision process was to

7 identify the need for upgrading and

8 modernizing the system. The Coast Guard has

9 estimated that to fully modernize it, to

10 replace some of the old vacuum tube

11 transmitters and to take care of facilities

12 that are very badly out of date and actually

13 dangerous to maintain, in some cases, the

14 full cost of that is something in the range

15 of \$110 to \$120 million.

16 That is a very substantial

17 investment for a system which is being

18 supplanted, in many respects, by

19 satellite‑based navigation. And so the issue

20 that we have had to deal with is, is it

21 desirable to make that investment? How much

22 of that investment? And on top of that,

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1 there is, of course, an annual operating cost

2 that is in the range of \$25 to \$30 million

3 for the system. So that is the kind of

4 policy decision and conflicting questions

5 that we had to try to resolve.

6 Recapitalization is underway. The

7 Coast Guard is using limited funds that were

8 provided by Congress in the last couple of

9 years to begin modernization and upgrading of

10 the system. And then we will be putting the

11 \$20 million that has been requested this

12 year, assuming it gets appropriated. I\'ll

13 bring that into the modernization as well.

14 The automatic blink system for

15 aviation, which is something that the Loran

16 community has desired and parts of the

17 aviation community have desired for a number

18 of years, is near the operational point, and

19 is expected to be turned and made operational

20 by the Coast Guard in about three months.

21 And simultaneously, the Coast Guard

22 is working with FAA on a variety of projects

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1 looking at enhancing Loran technology for the

2 future, should the decision be to maintain

3 the system over the long term.

4 One of the key issues that we have

5 to deal with is the question of vulnerability

6 of GPS‑based systems. The President\'s

7 Commission on Critical Infrastructure

8 Protection, which reported to the President

9 about two, two and a half years ago, was

10 focused primarily on information

11 infrastructure: Vulnerabilities of Internet

12 and Internet‑based systems, but other forms

13 of infrastructure as well.

14 And one modest but, to us,

15 important aspect of the report of the PCCIP

16 was the direction that we look at the

17 vulnerability of GPS‑based systems. And

18 recognizing that the GPS signal is fairly

19 weak and is subject to jamming and other

20 forms of intentional or unintentional

21 interference. So we are told to take a hard

22 look at that.

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1 And a study is underway. Jim

2 Carroll of the Volpe Center is leading that

3 effort. The first phase, which has

4 identified some of the potential areas of

5 vulnerability for both land, maritime, and

6 aviation services, was completed last year.

7 And the Volpe Center is working on a second

8 phase, which would identify a range of

9 mitigation options. And the results of that

10 study and the mitigation opportunities and

11 limitations will be considered by the

12 department in our policy making in the years

13 ahead. And again, those results would

14 presumably be reflected in the future

15 versions of the FRP.

16 Another major concern, in addition

17 to the vulnerability of systems to

18 interference, is a concern about protecting

19 the spectrum used by GPS. The world

20 radiocommunications conference ‑‑ WRC 2000,

21 if you will ‑‑ convenes in Istanbul in May.

22 It runs for about a month. We have a GPS

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1 agenda that is important to us and that we

2 want to ‑‑ we have been working very hard,

3 both within the U.S. and internationally, to

4 get support for it.

5 The U.S. delegation will be headed

6 by Ambassador Gail Schoettler.

7 Ms. Schoettler has been on board for the past

8 several months and has been working

9 tirelessly in the international arena to get

10 the U.S. Agenda, which goes far beyond

11 GPS ‑‑ but to get the U.S. agenda known and

12 understood and supported internationally.

13 With respect to GPS, there are four

14 key items. One is that we want to assure

15 that there is an authorization for

16 space‑to‑space transmission of the signals.

17 The current authorizations for GPS are for

18 space‑to‑earth. There are a lots of benefit

19 for satellite‑to‑satellite and space‑to‑space

20 use of the system.

21 Second, we want to put a stake

22 through the heart of proposals to share the

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1 GPS frequency band with MMS systems. You may

2 recall that in 1997, there were serious

3 proposals coming rom INMARSAT and others to

4 try to allow MMS in terms of operating the

5 same band as GPS and the Russian GLONASS

6 system.

7 We think that the technical studies

8 have been done mand the technical studies

9 demonstrate conclusively that sharing the

10 band is not feasible, and we want to try to

11 get that nailed down and terminate any

12 further consideration of that proposal among

13 the international spectrum community.

14 Third, we want to get the

15 allocation for the L5 frequency. That is the

16 frequency in the aeronautical band. That

17 frequency has the basic aeronautical

18 protection that it needs; we basically need

19 to get the authorization for radio navigation

20 for satellite‑to‑earth broadcast in that

21 band.

22 That has been perhaps the most

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1 difficult of the issues. We think that we

2 are getting broad support, that the world

3 user community is recognizing the benefits of

4 having a new and more robust civil signal,

5 and that we have good support for that

6 proposal.

7 And finally, the Europeans are

8 moving ahead with the definition stage of the

9 Galileo system. They have to make some final

10 policy decisions on that, on how they are

11 going to proceed toward the end of this year.

12 But as they are working at the moment, they

13 have got a variety of frequency or spectrum

14 proposals that they are dealing with.

15 It is a little bit like, if you

16 will, a Chinese restaurant menu where you

17 choose one from column A and one from column

18 B. They don\'t quite have a final package of

19 frequencies that they have decided upon at

20 this point. So they are trying to assure in

21 work that they will have allocations for the

22 frequencies that they need, and yet at the

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1 same time not try to get too much frequency

2 and have opposition from the world community.

3 So that is an area where we are monitoring

4 very carefully and want to be sure that U.S.

5 interests are not compromised as the European

6 proposals go forward.

7 So that is a summary of where we

8 are and what was in the 1999 FRP. For the

9 2001 FRP, unit conferences begin today, as

10 Jim Carroll mentioned. This may seem a

11 little strange, that we have published and we

12 have just got copies of the FRP out.

13 But we want to be sure that we

14 adhere to the schedule and that we try to get

15 the next edition published within the

16 allotted two years. There will be a second

17 user conference scheduled in June, I believe,

18 in San Diego, San Diego or Los Angeles, in

19 conjunction with IN ‑‑ San Diego, in

20 conjunction with an Institute of Navigation

21 meeting. We hope to have a first draft of

22 the next edition over the next few months and

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1 begin the clearance process early next year.

2 And if you are paying attention and

3 if I haven\'t put you all to sleep, you will

4 note that there is a typo in the last line of

5 the presentation there. We\'re not going to

6 be issuing the 2001 FRP in July or August of

7 this year, but rather, we hope well before

8 the end of 2001.

9 So that is it in a nutshell. We

10 have a great panel of navigation system

11 experts who will be participating and be

12 available here to hear your input, to respond

13 to questions, and help to deal with the whole

14 range of user interests that we will need to

15 take into account as we develop the next

16 edition of the FRP.

17 We have Coast Guard, FAA, DOD,

18 Office of Secretary, others represented. I

19 should mention one name. He is not on this

20 particular panel, but I do want to pay

21 tribute to the continuing work of Heywood

22 Shirer. Heywood, in our office, has been the

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1 guiding force behind the FRP over the years.

2 And it was he who basically who did the

3 lion\'s share of the work on putting the 1999

4 version together.

5 Heywood gets some slings and arrows

6 occasionally. People seem to blame him for

7 all the deficiencies of government policy

8 making. And I will say that he is not

9 guilty. He is the one who has tried

10 heroically to keep us on schedule and to get

11 the policy decisions made in a timely manner.

12 And I just wanted to tell you he has done a

13 great job, and we expect to continue to rely

14 on him for work on the 2001 edition.

15 So that\'s it for me. And I think

16 you are probably happy to not hear from me

17 any longer. Let me turn it over to Jim and

18 his panel.

19 MR. CARROLL: Okay. We are all set

20 to begin the next phase. Thank you very

21 much, Joe, by the way, for those comments.

22 And I also endorse your good words about

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1 Heywood.

2 Would the panel please take their

3 seats up here on the dais? While that is

4 happening, let me just go through some quick

5 biographies on these gentlemen.

6 If they seat in order that the

7 names are arranged, I will start from the

8 very end closest to you. That gentleman at

9 the end at the moment is Mike Shaw. He is

10 working at the Office of the Assistant

11 Secretary for Transportation Policy. That is

12 Joe Canny\'s office, U.S. Department of

13 Transportation. He is a senior team leader

14 of the radionavigation and positioning staff.

15 And as such, he oversees implementing the

16 policy and planning responsibilities of the

17 transportation department involving

18 radionavigation systems. This includes

19 implementing the presidential decision

20 directive on GPS, working with the

21 interagency GPS executive board, and

22 participating in international negotiations

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1 involving GPS and its augmentations.

2 To Mike\'s right is John Macaluso.

3 John also works in the radionavigation and

4 positioning and policy staff \-\-\-- the agency

5 policy and implementation team for the

6 differential global positioning system. And

7 he gave a really fine presentation on that

8 this morning. I hope you were able to listen

9 to that, as well as an earlier and similar

10 presentation earlier in the week.

11 Okay. Next to him on his right is

12 Cdr. Curt Dubay, chief of the radionavigation

13 division in the Office of Aids to Navigation

14 of the Coast Guard. He presently is located

15 in their office in Washington, D.C., and as

16 such is responsible for all of the Coast

17 Guard radionavigation systems, including

18 Loran‑C, the maritime DGPS service, and

19 fielding of the new nationwide differential

20 GPS system. He has a masters in EE and is a

21 licensed professional engineer.

22 To Cdr. Dubay\'s right is David

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1 Olsen. Dave is the lead navigation system

2 engineer in the architecture and system

3 engineering directorate at FAA headquarters

4 in Washington. An important focus of Dave\'s

5 work is the planning for the phase‑down of

6 conventional ground‑based navigation systems

7 as the national airspace system transitions

8 to primarily satellite‑based navigation

9 service.

10 To his right is another gentleman

11 from the FAA, John Augustine. John leads the

12 NAS, National Airspace System, implementation

13 activities within the FAA‑GPS product team.

14 This work centers primarily around developing

15 the necessary infrastructure in order to

16 utilize the WAAS and LAAS systems and to

17 deliver user benefits. And I guess you all

18 know that WAAS for the wide area augmentation

19 system; LAAS is the local area augmentation

20 system.

21 And finally, but by no means least,

22 is Raymond Swider. Ray is the assistant for

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1 GPS positioning and navigation at the Office

2 of the Secretary of Defense, the C3I space

3 systems directorate. He is responsible for

4 DOD coordination of the FRP. And it is a

5 pleasure to have you on the panel, Ray.

6 So with that, let me at this point

7 ask if there are, based on the presentation

8 you have heard, the information to date, or

9 even something spilling over from the FRP or

10 navigation policy discussions that have gone

11 on earlier in the week, if anybody has

12 questions at the moment on anything you have

13 just heard, including Joe Canny\'s

14 presentation just made?

15 All right. Yes. To answer

16 questions, we have got microphones, and we

17 certainly encourage to use them if possible.

18 We are transcribing this meeting, so if you

19 could also give your name and a brief

20 affiliation, that would help the process.

21 MS. DIVIS: Dee Ann Divis with GPS

22 World. I was wondering what the schedule

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1 would be for Loran‑C for the long‑term

2 evaluation.

3 MR. CARROLL: Curt, that may be

4 you, but we can try ‑‑ Mike, are you ready to

5 give that one a shot?

6 MR. SHAW: Is this on? I only have

7 a couple of comments, and then maybe Curt

8 wants to add some, and then, I don\'t know,

9 maybe Dave.

10 A number of activities are going on

11 that are looking at the mix of

12 radionavigation systems out in the future.

13 One Joe mentioned earlier was our

14 vulnerability assessment. We are looking at

15 vulnerabilities of various systems to include

16 GPS and what the final mix is.

17 There is no definitive schedule, I

18 think, right now that says in either 2001 or

19 2002 or 2003, there will be a hard decision

20 either to terminate or not terminate. But

21 rather, we are going to go through the

22 process out for the next year or two and

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1 examine what that mix is.

2 So, you know, Dan, I don\'t know.

3 If you look at particular studies like the

4 vulnerability study for that, there are

5 milestones for that. But to my knowledge,

6 there is not a specific date where the

7 government will have to make a decision,

8 either yes to terminate or no to remain.

9 But, Curt, do you have anything to

10 add?

11 MR. DUBAY: I\'d just like to cover

12 real briefly a couple of the studies that

13 we\'re engaged in right now in partnership

14 with the FAA. And Mr. Olsen may want to

15 throw in a few cents afterwards.

16 We\'re in the process of modernizing

17 Loran‑C, as Joe Canny had mentioned in his

18 presentation. We are utilizing the funds

19 that Congress has provided to renew our aging

20 infrastructure. I don\'t know if there are

21 many people here today who caught the

22 presentation on Tuesday. It is actually a

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1 fairly lengthy discussion. I would be happy

2 to go offline with anybody afterwards and

3 provide you what was briefed on Tuesday.

4 But to put it very shortly, the

5 modernization is proceeding with funds

6 provided by Congress at the best speed

7 possible, the intent being to keep the system

8 viable for as long as it is needed. In the

9 meantime, as Mr. Shaw has mentioned, there

10 are studies underway.

11 We are engaged in four particular

12 projects in partnership with FAA to look at

13 what can be done with Loran‑C, what is

14 possible to do with it. And I think this is

15 necessary information before you can decide

16 whether it can fulfill any perceived or

17 anticipated needs for Loran‑C.

18 First is to do a flight test of an

19 H‑field antenna. This is being done in a

20 cooperative effort between Coast Guard FAA

21 and a couple of other private contractors to

22 follow on a test that was done, I think,

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1 about a year and a half ago to a simulated

2 in‑flight test of an H‑field antenna in a

3 hangar. This H‑field antenna is basically a

4 magnetic antenna. It is virtually ‑‑ it

5 appears to be virtually immune to

6 precipitation static type of noise, and thus

7 holds a lot of promise and is an interesting

8 technology.

9 Our second project we are working

10 is the development of an integrated Loran/GPS

11 receiver. I think there is a growing

12 recognition that integrated systems are the

13 wave of the future.

14 A third project is to develop an

15 all‑in‑view Loran‑C receiver. In the past,

16 Loran has already been operated on a chain

17 basis. For instance, the stations in the

18 northeastern U.S. were all tied together in a

19 format called a Loran chain. And the way the

20 system is structured right now, you would

21 only use stations from one chain to develop

22 your navigation fix.

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1 This new type of receiver would

2 look at all stations that are in view, and in

3 a sense would function a lot more like a GPS

4 receiver, as a ranging receiver, than it

5 would as a classic Loran receiver. And that

6 also holds some interesting possibilities,

7 because by being able to look at more

8 stations and more locations, it improves the

9 quality of your basic fix.

10 The fourth study that is going on

11 is really the most interesting. What this

12 entails is looking at the bandwidth that is

13 available in the Loran‑C signal itself to put

14 additional information onto it. There is a

15 technology being explored in Europe right

16 now: It is a method of putting information

17 on Loran‑C that becomes a DGPS transmit on

18 the Loran, if you will. It has the one

19 possible drawback in that it doesn\'t have a

20 very high data rate, about 30 to 70 bits per

21 second. You contrast that to a system like

22 the WAAS that runs at about 250 bits per

35

1 second.

2 We\'re exploring some techniques in

3 partnership with FAA to see how high we can

4 push that data rate. And right now, by

5 looking at some techniques that have been

6 done in the past, additional pulses very

7 similar to a system that is called a Loran‑ D

8 from a few years ago and a couple of other

9 different modulation techniques make it look

10 very promising to break that 250‑bit‑per‑

11 second barrier.

12 And once that technology is shown,

13 it can then be evaluated. We are certainly

14 interested in it from a command and control

15 perspective from what that can do in

16 improving the way we operate Loran‑C without

17 dependence on a ground network of

18 communications.

19 But once this work is completed ‑‑

20 and most of this is going to be happening

21 about the next year and a half or so ‑‑ I

22 think there will be better information to

36

1 make some of these other decisions.

2 Anything you want to add, Dave?

3 MR. OLSEN: I believe Cdr. Dubay

4 has pretty well described the joint efforts,

5 the cooperative efforts between our two

6 agencies, the FAA and the Coast Guard. To

7 the extent that those studies and analyses

8 show positive results ‑‑ and we certainly

9 think they will; it would be the

10 anticipation. There has been some

11 substantial developments in Loran technology

12 since the current generation, if you will, of

13 Loran receivers. Today\'s receivers were

14 designed and built quite some number of years

15 ago.

16 Now, whether those new technologies

17 and capabilities are capitalized upon in the

18 marketplace, I think, is what will remain to

19 be seen. For instance, with the addition now

20 of the automatic blink system on Loran,

21 conceivably, conceivably, a Loran receiver

22 could be approved for doing nonprecision

37

1 instrument approaches in the national

2 airspace, in the U.S. airspace. Whether a

3 manufacturer of those old technology

4 receivers, which have been out of production

5 and off the market for quite some number of

6 years, has a financial incentive to now step

7 forward and go to the substantial expense of

8 getting a certification approval on those

9 receivers is, I think, a question.

10 Again, whether an avionics

11 manufacturer or one or more manufacturers out

12 there are interested in developing new

13 technology receivers using things like HDL

14 antennas, digital signal processing, ONG

15 receivers, to pursue various approvals for

16 operations in the aviation mode, again, that

17 is a question. And I think it is a question

18 that is going to have to be answered in the

19 marketplace.

20 MR. CARROLL: Can I break in at

21 this point? Somebody had a question to be

22 asked next.

38

1 After we take your question, what I

2 would like to do is shift the format a little

3 bit and go ‑‑ I know there are two gentlemen

4 who are ‑‑ or at least aware to me at this

5 point ‑‑ who want to make presentations. So

6 what I would like to do is, after this next

7 question, get into that. And then

8 thereafter, since I know of no other

9 presentations per se, we will finish up

10 today\'s activity with basically a question‑

11 and‑answer session where the panelists, as

12 best they can, will try to deal with any

13 particular FRP‑related, policy‑related

14 question that comes from the floor.

15 So let me do that. So let me take

16 your question. And again, if you could

17 identify yourself. And then we\'ll hear a

18 couple of presentations.

19 MR. BROWN: Carl Brown with Air

20 Logistics.

21 The question is, when the LAAS and

22 WAAS are implemented, will the currently

39

1 family of TSO 129 receivers be able to

2 receive the augmented signal from both

3 WAAS ‑‑ primarily WAAS and LAAS?

4 MR. AUGUSTINE: The question was,

5 the current TSO C129 receivers, would they be

6 able to utilize the WAAS and LAAS signals?

7 The WAAS architecture, the signal

8 that is broadcast, will present the user

9 with ‑‑ in the end state system, the concept

10 is a GLS, which is a GNS, global navigation

11 satellite system landing service. That is

12 your ILS look‑alike precision approach. It

13 will also provide a LNAV/NEVAV capability,

14 which is also a vertically guided stabilized

15 approach, but just to a higher DH than your

16 GLS ILS look‑alike service. And the last

17 capability would be an LNAV, which is just a

18 nonprecision GPS approach. So the TSOC 129

19 users will be able to utilize the approaches,

20 but they are not going to get the

21 augmentation benefit that a WAAS receiver

22 would.

40

1 So the simple answer is no; your

2 TSOC 129 receivers will not be able to

3 utilize the augmentations from WAAS and LAAS.

4 They will not be excluded from service. You

5 will still be able to utilize them in a

6 nonprecision approach mode. In the WAAS

7 approach place, the RNAV area navigation

8 which we are moving toward, it does have

9 three lines of minima, and one of those is

10 the TSOC 129 approach.

11 So does that answer your question?

12 MR. BROWN: That answers it.

13 To receive the augmentation, will

14 it require a completely new receiver, or will

15 modems be available to augment that?

16 MR. AUGUSTINE: That\'s really ‑‑ it

17 depends on the manufacturer. Obviously,

18 manufacturers today are aware of the

19 augmentation systems that are coming along.

20 Several have said that their boxes will be

21 upgradeable. Whether that means that you

22 pull out the entire internal software and

41

1 replace it with the new WAAS and LAAS

2 software, that remains to be seen. The local

3 area augmentation system is going to be

4 operating on a different ‑‑ it is a different

5 system altogether.

6 So the basic answer is, in order to

7 get the augmentations, you are probably going

8 to have to buy a new receiver or undergo

9 substantial upgrades and a new antenna and a

10 new processor for your equipment. So in

11 essence, that is almost like buying a new

12 one. You may ‑‑ the manufacturers may offer

13 some incentive to upgrade if you have an

14 existing product. They may give you a

15 discount to upgrade. But again, that is a

16 question for the manufacturers.

17 MR. CARROLL: Okay. Thank you,

18 John. I guess at this point, I would ‑‑ so

19 can I ask you, please, to defer for a little

20 bit, because we kind of have scheduled to go

21 into this phase of statements or

22 presentations. The two gentlemen who want to

42

1 make statements are Langhorne Bond and David

2 Scull.

3 Mr. Bond is interested in telling

4 us about what he found out at the recent

5 conference in Bonn. I think that was last

6 week in Bonn, Germany.

7 And it is a pleasure for me to

8 introduce to you Mr. Bond, who has been

9 really active in recent years in the area of

10 radionavigation systems, keeping us all on

11 the straight and narrow.

12 MR. BOND: I have been clocking up

13 statements on this subject. This is No. 18

14 around the world, Opryland to Germany and so

15 on. And I promised to get a demo on our

16 redundant system to those of you who are here

17 today, something to wake you up in the

18 afternoon. So if you just take a look here.

19 I got a belt and suspenders, Mommy. That is

20 a redundant system. One fails, the other ‑‑

21 now you are going to see a demonstration

22 going to a single‑thread system. So

43

1 everybody in this room is really at risk in

2 case the single‑thread system here should

3 fail. This is a terrifying prospect.

4 I wanted to say what is happening

5 in the world out there a little bit.

6 Sometimes I think that we have a theology of

7 total dependence on satellite systems. A

8 celestial act will come upon us and solve all

9 of our problems. It really isn\'t so. GPS is

10 a useful technology. But it is not, I

11 emphasize, the complete picture for all of

12 us.

13 I said in ‑‑ when I was in Bonn

14 last week, they gave me the job of giving the

15 keynote address to the beer party. And so

16 I ‑‑ I have never done that before. But I

17 told the group that was assembled there ‑‑

18 forgive me, Curt; he heard this ‑‑ that I was

19 raised as a member of the Church of England.

20 And I was thinking about changing my

21 theological orientation to Islam, because it

22 is a precept of the Muslim world that there

44

1 is only one perfect thing, and that is God,

2 okay? I agree with that. I think that is a

3 really fundamental piece of wisdom. And it

4 has great applicability to those of us who

5 are working in satellite navigation, because

6 satellites are not perfect.

7 This is not a theology. There is

8 not a holy grail out there. It is excellent,

9 but it is not perfect. Satellite ‑‑

10 Orientals will make an Oriental rug. They

11 deliberately put a defect in it in order to

12 be consistent with their theology. So we are

13 going to use satellites\' positioning and

14 timing a whole lot in the world. But we are

15 not going to use it alone. We are not going

16 to put our people, our timing systems, the

17 rest of the world at risk solely with GPS.

18 GPS and all GNSS systems have

19 immense power to be creative. They also have

20 immense powers of destruction and disruption.

21 And while I don\'t want to get into the

22 details that you all may have heard so many

45

1 times in the past, there are at least two

2 obstacles in the aviation and safety of light

3 world that mitigate that there will never be

4 GPS sole means.

5 One of them is the basic and

6 fundamental and embedded principle in our

7 aviation world that we have a redundancy. We

8 know that everything on an airplane may

9 sooner or later fail, so we have a lot of

10 terms out there in aviation that describe

11 this: Redundancy, backup, fail‑safe,

12 alternate load path and structures. All of

13 these things are based on the hard‑won

14 knowledge that, if we put ourselves at risk

15 and all of our airplanes in the sky at risk

16 because of a single point failure out there,

17 we are going to all regret it deeply. And we

18 are not going to do that.

19 GPS sole means, incidentally, puts

20 not only one aircraft at risk, the way a

21 certification problem would do with one

22 airplane, but puts every aircraft in the sky

46

1 at risk, if it should be jammed, cut off, if

2 the United States should exercise its

3 publicly reserved right to turn GPS off

4 whenever it wants to for whatever reason it

5 chooses to do. And that reason is

6 militarily‑based, and it is entirely correct.

7 All of us who believe in the western

8 democracies and our form of government and

9 our NATO alliance understands fully the

10 reason for our reserving the right to turn

11 off GPS. But it has consequences for us in

12 the civil world, and that is that there

13 should be a backup.

14 Which leads me to a report briefly

15 on what happened at Bonn, Germany. This is

16 the second major meeting, the first being in

17 London in November, jointly put on by the

18 international Loran association, the Royal

19 Institution of Navigation, on the subject of

20 to build a system that takes full advantage

21 of GNSS, GPS being the first one, but also

22 builds in a redundant backup system that can

47

1 provide timing and positioning information at

2 the same time.

3 The choice, clearly, of those two

4 meetings, and in particular the one in Bonn,

5 is to take a hard look at Loran, which

6 provides timing information, backup for all

7 of us, for your Internet, the

8 telecommunications world, in case GPS is

9 somehow cut out, which is not difficult, as

10 well as positioning information.

11 We had a two day meeting in Bonn,

12 and the following day GAUSS, G‑A‑U‑S‑S, met.

13 We had first Galileo and now GAUSS,

14 historically correct terms, which was a

15 working group of European nations who are in

16 the Loran train now on how to adapt this

17 Loran technology to GNSS in ways that are

18 low‑cost, full coverage, preserve safety.

19 So that is underway. The papers

20 are flowing around. Universities in Germany

21 and England and the Netherlands and Italy are

22 all working on this problem. And it is a

48

1 fact that the Europeans have now taken the

2 lead in world radionavigation. They got it

3 figured out first. They got past the

4 theology. So if you want to know what the

5 future is going to look like, you can just go

6 and read the papers that are submitted in

7 Europe. We have lost the lead in this field.

8 I\'m sorry to say that, but it is a fact.

9 I think that rather completes my

10 presentation. And I would advise all of you

11 folks up here who worked so hard on the

12 augmentation systems up here ‑‑ to

13 considerable effect, I might add ‑‑ just

14 remember the theological principle that while

15 satellite navigation is really terrific and

16 it does a whole lot of good for all of us,

17 and it is a superb thing, it does have its

18 limitations. And when we come to the point

19 in the United States of accepting those

20 limitations, we will catch up with the rest

21 of the world.

22 Thank you very much, ladies and

49

1 gentlemen.

2 MR. CARROLL: Thanks for the

3 demonstration, Langhorne.

4 Dave, I don\'t know where you ‑‑

5 okay, fine. It is your soapbox, Dave.

6 Dave Scull has been around this

7 community also for many years. And I\'m, like

8 I think most of you are, very interested to

9 hear what he has to say.

10 MR. SCULL: Well, thank you, Jim.

11 I thought something was different

12 in my life when I went home. We got our

13 second English bulldog last June, and he has

14 grown up in the family, pretty well‑adjusted.

15 I came in from this meeting the other night

16 for the first time in a suit, and he went

17 bananas. I have been able to send it to the

18 cleaners since. But normally I have not been

19 on the podium, and I appreciate your

20 forbearance.

21 I am serving as the interim

22 president of the International Navigation

50

1 Association. There are so many things going

2 on that I read about, I felt like I ought to

3 get back in and at least see what I can do to

4 change some things, because I\'m not happy in

5 certain ways.

6 For those of you who are not

7 familiar with the International Navigation

8 Association, it was formerly the

9 International Omega Association, which was

10 formed in 1976. It was very instrumental in

11 getting receiver manufacturers, government

12 administrations, and users like the airlines

13 together at a meeting where there was a

14 report. I just don\'t see this going on at

15 this type of meeting. I think we have a need

16 for this.

17 Of course, with the termination of

18 Omega back in 1997, we decided to rename the

19 association the International Navigation

20 Association and see if we had some role,

21 maybe, to play that some of the other

22 institutions were not playing in

51

1 navigation ‑‑ a little more user‑oriented,

2 perhaps.

3 In 1996, August 1996, we had an

4 annual meeting in Helsinki, just a small

5 meeting, but it was well‑attended like the

6 meeting that Langhorne Bond just returned

7 from. At that meeting, a resolution was

8 adopted by the participants for an historic

9 principle of prudent navigation and the use

10 of two or more independent and available to

11 similar nav aids. Since then, little has

12 been done to assure this principle, as far as

13 we are concerned.

14 The recently released Federal

15 Radionavigation Plan continues to emphasize

16 the phaseout of all terrestrial‑based

17 navigation systems with complete reliance on

18 GPS. Although I am unhappy, at least we

19 don\'t use the term \"phaseout,\" maybe thanks

20 to Dave. He remembers some of the arguments

21 we had before about maintaining some of the

22 ground‑based systems. And the term now is

52

1 phasedown, which makes it a little more

2 palatable. It gives you some hope that maybe

3 these systems will be around, whether it is a

4 less dense BOR system, Loran, or whatever.

5 We have to ask if the augmentation

6 is a GPS such as GS stationary satellites and

7 ground networks, if differential stations are

8 adequate to ensure the safety of navigation.

9 Will these augmentations serve all

10 geolocation needs, are other systems needed

11 to provided coverage in mountainous and urban

12 areas? I think those are still very much

13 open questions. They came up again and again

14 during the \-\-\-- meeting.

15 What role do inertial systems play

16 as a backup to GPS? I mean, I can\'t find

17 much in the FRP that really brings this out.

18 But I think perhaps in the next edition,

19 maybe you could do more in that area.

20 What are the plans for training?

21 If you noticed, a big thing. I checked into

22 that Web on Monday, and thought I would get a

53

1 little up to date on WAAS and LAAS, what is

2 going on. The first thing that hit me was a

3 discussion of WAAS. I won\'t go into all of

4 the details, but the bottom line is, when is

5 the FAA or the DOT going to worry about

6 equipment standards and training? Are they

7 going to meet the WAAS schedule? I realize

8 the FRP was essentially a 1998 document, as

9 it started out, and a lot of things have

10 happened since then. But I feel there is an

11 inaccuracy in the FRP in not really

12 addressing the training issues.

13 I\'m a private pilot. In fact, one

14 of my first licenses had Langhorne Bond\'s

15 signature on it before he got his ticket, I

16 think. And I have been at it. I took a

17 course in GPS nonprecisional approaches back

18 in December. And my head was swimming after

19 the first few minutes and I learned to push

20 the hold button or the autosequencing button.

21 And when I got in the airplane, I sure busted

22 my check ride. I pushed the wrong button.

54

1 And I\'m not a full‑time commercial pilot.

2 I\'m not IFR‑equipped. But I\'m sure other

3 people are going to have problems this way.

4 So I think that is an area that really needs

5 to be addressed some day in the next FRP.

6 You know, we have a lot of

7 proponents out there proposing various

8 systems as a backup to GPS. And I don\'t

9 think we are looking at the full spectrum of

10 signals out there. For instance, you know,

11 BORFTME, we are still looking at 1940s

12 technology. In Loran‑C, we are looking at

13 1950s technology. And I really commend the

14 Coast Guard, you know, with the urging of

15 Congress. It is sort of strange that we have

16 to get all of our initiatives from Congress

17 rather than coming from the government. But

18 I commend them on looking towards a new

19 receiver using digital signal processing.

20 But I would like to go beyond that.

21 I would like to see somebody say, hey, maybe

22 we can make Loran a \-\-\-- spectrum system and,

55

1 you know, capitalize on some of the

2 technologies of the new millennium besides

3 DSP. Maybe we ought to. You know, we\'re

4 worried about frequency allocation space.

5 You know, we got the 10 to 14‑kilohertz band

6 sitting there because the meg is gone. But I

7 don\'t think you have to worry about satellite

8 system users getting in that bed and

9 cluttering it up.

10 You know, perhaps something ‑‑ and

11 I wrote a paper back in 1968 to the NSIA, the

12 National Security Industrial Association,

13 where I had a dream even back then that we

14 wouldn\'t think of Loran or transit at the

15 time; we would have a black box that we would

16 put on the ship that it was on. It would

17 just collect signals without worrying about

18 what system they were from, but using all of

19 the information, such as the prudent

20 navigator should do and has done in the past.

21 Use every bit of information you get. That\'s

22 the only way we really have a safe, safe

56

1 system.

2 My last comment just concerns

3 communicating with the actual radionavigation

4 system users. The actual users of systems

5 don\'t really get a chance to come to these

6 meetings or don\'t know about them or, you

7 know, don\'t have the time to really get

8 involved.

9 I remember going to Oshkosh in

10 1984. I just went there on my own as a

11 private. And I got a call from the Coast

12 Guard, asking me to represent the DOT

13 position on radionavigation. It was before

14 FAA had really thought about Loran‑C. But I

15 went into this tent with a GPS manufacturer

16 who gave a talk on the upcoming GPS system.

17 And we were almost booted out of the tent.

18 They said, \"Who wants GPS? We are all flying

19 with Loran at this time.\" Well, next year,

20 the administrator got somebody to go to

21 Oshkosh and the whole mood changed. But it

22 was an eye opener to me, you know, as a desk

57

1 navigator, as I was called at the time, to

2 see what the pilots really wanted.

3 My recommendation is, you know, get

4 to Oshkosh or this group. Get to the boat

5 shows in New York and Los Angeles, and give

6 them the same information we got here. You

7 are sort of reaching the wire when you talk

8 to us. But get out there and let John Q.

9 Public know what is going on.

10 Thank you.

11 MR. CARROLL: Are there any more

12 statements that I may not have heard about

13 before? Now would be the time, however, if

14 you want to make similar comments or raise

15 issues relative to the topic at hand.

16 Okay. With that, what I would like

17 to do right next is to let Mr. Mike Shaw

18 comment on some of the things he heard from

19 Mr. Scull.

20 MR. SHAW: Actually, what I would

21 like to comment is both from Mr. Bond and

22 Mr. Scull. And then maybe some of the other

58

1 panelists would like to add something, too.

2 First of all is to thank them very

3 much. In essence, this conference or this

4 meeting, if you will, is your input into us.

5 I mean, we very much are in the receive mode,

6 versus in many times, I guess, we are up here

7 articulating and answering questions. So

8 presentations from Langhorne and Dave are

9 very helpful in taking input into as we start

10 the 2001 FRP process.

11 As Langhorne started, as he went

12 through his suspender analogy, the thought

13 occurred to me, and I guess I\'ll ask the

14 question, of the men in the audience, how

15 many have both suspenders and belts on?

16 Would you raise your hands? Well, I know

17 there is at least one. Well, I see one.

18 I\'m not sure what that tells us,

19 other than perhaps wearing belts and

20 suspenders is not a safety of life item or an

21 issue. But at any rate, the thought occurred

22 to me.

59

1 The second thing I would say ‑‑ and

2 really, it is reference to the inputs that

3 came from both Langhorne and Dave ‑‑ if you

4 look at the FRP and where we are in this

5 process, I would say there is probably three

6 overall themes. The first theme, of course,

7 is we\'re ‑‑ and I would characterize in the

8 initial stages of phasing in satellite

9 navigation capability. I wouldn\'t disagree

10 with any of the comments by Dave or Langhorne

11 about, you know, sole means use, about it

12 being the only thing, et cetera. But

13 satellite navigation is bringing us many

14 capabilities we haven\'t had before in other

15 radionavigation systems, whether that is

16 all‑weather capability, a standard global

17 georeference system ‑‑ you know, you have any

18 number of characteristics that make this

19 capability very, very effective and very

20 useful.

21 Having said that, it is not

22 nirvana. It is not perfect. It doesn\'t do

60

1 everything for all people for all times. And

2 as we look at that, I guess the second theme

3 is to look at out in the future, what does

4 that mean? One of my old bosses, Marty

5 Pezeski (phonetic), had a very wise

6 statement. And the statement was that the

7 end of implementing satellite navigation

8 capability, if all our current ground

9 radionav structure is in place, then somehow

10 we have failed. And that means something has

11 got to go.

12 So, you know, it would not be

13 responsible government. It would not be

14 responsible citizenry if that indeed was the

15 end state.

16 The third thing I would say in the

17 theme is, okay, if we accept the first two,

18 then what does go? And if you look at in the

19 policies in the FRP, we have some projected

20 dates. I know we play in the Washington

21 environment with words. But there is a very

22 definite difference between \"phasedown\" and

61

1 \"phaseout.\" \"Out\" means everything goes out

2 the window, period, end of discussion.

3 \"Phasedown\" means something is going to

4 remain.

5 What that is, I think those

6 analyses and those studies and those

7 processes are going on. But in the final

8 analysis, it is going to be the user

9 communities, the stakeholders that

10 communicate to the modal administrations ‑‑

11 the FAA, the Coast Guard, et cetera ‑‑ on

12 what their needs and their uses are.

13 A very, very difficult issue as we

14 look at that. I am often reminded of a

15 similar problem over in the DOD. We

16 certainly have gone into a new, I guess,

17 world order where we are tearing down

18 military, and we don\'t need all of the bases

19 that we have. Well, everybody supports

20 shutting down military bases ‑‑ we don\'t need

21 them all ‑‑ until it comes to the point that

22 you shut down the base in that region, in

62

1 that city, in that county. And then it

2 becomes, you know, I\'m all for shutting down

3 bases, but not on my watch in my city. And

4 there are a lot of analogies in what

5 radionavigation systems remain.

6 So again, we are very interested in

7 your inputs into it. I don\'t disagree with

8 anything that Langhorne has said about sole

9 means and satellite navigation being all

10 things for all people, because it is not.

11 Two final comments, and I guess I

12 would say, reference Dave\'s. And, talking

13 about we ought to be looking at IRS or INS as

14 a complementary system to satellite

15 navigation, I wholeheartedly support that.

16 In fact, both of you are here this morning

17 that got the presentation from the Minnesota

18 Transportation about using snowplows in

19 integrating IRS with GPS. I mean, a perfect

20 example why that is a very wise, a very

21 useful complementary technology.

22 The problem we have got and we have

63

1 got to address is the title of this is

2 radionavigation plan. Initial or INS/IRS is

3 not a radionavigation technology. Having

4 said that, there is very definitely a uniting

5 or a link with that.

6 The last comment I would say on

7 training: Training certainly is a very, very

8 important subject, and there are a number of

9 activities going on across the agencies,

10 across wherever on training. I\'m just not

11 sure I think that the FRP should be a

12 training document. Once we start down that

13 road, it becomes a very difficult issue to

14 address in a Federal Radionavigation Plan.

15 So again, my thanks to both

16 Langhorne and Dave. I don\'t disagree with

17 anything they necessarily have said. I don\'t

18 know if any of the other panelists would like

19 to add to anything in reference to their

20 presentations.

21 MR. MACALUSO: I would just like to

22 comment on a couple of things. The first one

64

1 is the question of will the augmentation

2 services serve all geolocations, canyons,

3 mountains, et cetera. That is one of the ‑‑

4 that is an excellent question, and one that

5 we are continually asking ourselves in the

6 nationwide differential global positioning

7 system, which is the expansion of the Coast

8 Guard maritime DGPS.

9 One of the guiding principles that

10 we have in NDGPS expansion and the question

11 of coverage and double coverage is, what is

12 the requirement? And the federal requirement

13 that we have for NDGPS is to enable the

14 Federal Railroad Administration\'s Positive

15 Train Control Safety Initiative, which is a

16 safety initiative that has been on the

17 National Transportation Safety Board\'s most

18 wanted safety initiatives since 1970.

19 So this has been on the to‑do list

20 of the department for many, many years. And

21 NDGPS, although only one part of PTC, is a

22 critical part. What we are doing is using

65

1 that requirement to guide the sequence of

2 installations across the country of the

3 ground‑based NDGPS stations.

4 The double coverage is necessary

5 for railroads, and that\'s it. However, I

6 showed a graphic in an earlier presentation

7 where railroads are pretty much all over the

8 country. So we are starting with the

9 planning factor that will need double

10 coverage everywhere. But as the stations

11 roll out, we will be reexamining that

12 continuously and deciding, where is coverage

13 required and where is double coverage

14 required.

15 The Coast Guard system operating at

16 the differential broadcast is going out

17 around the 300 kilohertz frequency band,

18 which has a ground wave associated and is

19 able to ‑‑ is designed best and operates best

20 in the land environment, where you have

21 terrain features surrounding the user that

22 would often be blocked by, for example, a

66

1 L‑band GPS broadcast from a geostationary

2 satellite.

3 So that is the first thing I would

4 like to just update everybody on. And the

5 second one is the comment on training, which

6 is part of the human factors element in

7 radionavigation, which is also recognized by

8 the department as being very important, and

9 part of the department\'s vulnerability study

10 for GPS‑based transportation infrastructure

11 that is being conducted at the Volpe National

12 Transportation Systems Center even now.

13 Human factors is one of the areas

14 that is being studied in that by the Volpe

15 Center. And the thing about GPS that is kind

16 of interesting is, I was with a gentleman

17 that is an expert in both Loran and GPS, and

18 we were in a car with a GPS receiver locking

19 onto the satellites. And he made a comment

20 that really stuck with me.

21 He said, \"You know,\" he said, \"I

22 have never really questioned the GPS fix. He

67

1 says very, very good and very reliable. When

2 it is there and when it works, you don\'t have

3 to question it. It is not the same with

4 other navigation systems, where you really

5 have to, you know, put a lot of thought into

6 it.\"

7 And there are some anecdotes that

8 probably a lot of us can recall where GPS has

9 sort of a different human factors flavor.

10 You know, it is there; it is excellent; and

11 it is possibly relied upon to a degree that

12 is above other radionavigation systems.

13 So the department recognizes that

14 and is currently studying the human

15 factors ‑‑ the human factors element of

16 GPS‑based transportation.

17 Thank you.

18 MR. DUBAY: I would like to throw

19 one set of thoughts in, if I could just step

20 up here for a moment. I think Mr. Bond and

21 Mr. Scull made some extremely good points.

22 I\'m sure this focuses.

68

1 I think one of the important things

2 about the FRP user conference is that, as

3 stated, this is a way for you to get

4 information to us. And I think one of our

5 responsibilities is to get information to

6 you. And just to ‑‑ I wanted to recap very

7 quickly.

8 On the DGPS side, the Coast Guard

9 is actively engaged in this national

10 expansion of the DGPS system. We are working

11 with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric

12 Administration to expand the GSAS, weather

13 monitoring system. It is a system for

14 measuring water vapor in the atmosphere to

15 improve weather forecasting. Can you imagine

16 that, using DGPS to improve weather

17 forecasting? Continuously operating

18 reference stations where they do the

19 postprocessing of DGPS.

20 In the Loran‑C area, what is it we

21 plan to do on our side? We are going to make

22 the equipment new. We are going to replace

69

1 our aging equipment. We are going to drive

2 the operating cost down. We are going to

3 make the equipment more reliable. We are

4 going to get the people off the stations, if

5 we can, to try to make it less expensive. We

6 are going to look at innovative ways to

7 operate and maintain the system, possibly

8 contract out.

9 And as I mentioned earlier, we are

10 partnering with the FAA to do a couple of

11 projects: Volunteer receivers, Loran data

12 channel, hybrid receivers, integrated

13 receivers, H‑field antennas. These are

14 exciting things.

15 I was with Mr. Bond down in Bonn

16 last week, and I saw something there that was

17 pretty exciting. There is research. There

18 is new ideas being presented. And our

19 challenge as part of the FRP conference to

20 everybody here, that there are a lot of

21 forums that meet throughout the year where

22 you can make your ideas known, where you can

70

1 do your own research, come up with ‑‑ what

2 are those smart ideas, what are the things

3 you can do with the systems? You know, I

4 look at that GSAS weather monitoring system.

5 It is like, goodness, again, using DGPS to

6 improve weather forecasting. That is pretty

7 exciting stuff.

8 And there are a lot of ideas, I\'m

9 sure, in this room. And we are very

10 interested in hearing them, just as we\'re

11 very interested in the Coast Guard in

12 continuing to work with the other agencies to

13 help meet our great nation\'s radionavigation

14 needs.

15 MR. CARROLL: Okay, thanks. I

16 guess, having heard the two presentations and

17 some comments on them, we are at the stage

18 now where it is pretty much an open floor.

19 I\'ll take questions as they come, with the

20 exception that I kind of cut off a gentleman

21 over ‑‑ who had ‑‑ I think it was you, sir,

22 yes. So why don\'t I give you the floor? And

71

1 then as I see them, we\'ll bring them up. We

2 may have a break in about 20 minutes. But we

3 can continue after the break as well.

4 Could you identify yourself, sir?

5 MR. SEARS: I\'m Bill Sears from the

6 Air Transport Association.

7 And I just wanted to say that

8 Mr. Canny talked about spectrum protection

9 and the activities that are going on related

10 to the world radio conference. And you are

11 looking at interference with GPS.

12 Have you considered ultra wideband

13 technology and the potential threat that is

14 out there?

15 MR. MACALUSO: Yes, actually, ultra

16 wideband technology is one of the ‑‑ there

17 are some agencies within the DOT that are

18 interested in that technology. It has a lot

19 of application in transportation. So the

20 Department is trying to balance the

21 usefulness with the interference to

22 radionavigation systems.

72

1 The Volpe study is looking at that.

2 There is actually more work being done by our

3 office. Many of you know Ms. Sally Ford is

4 very active in working with the FCC and the

5 other agencies in trying to make that proper

6 balance between the usefulness and the

7 interference of ultra wideband technologies.

8 So the answer is yes.

9 MR. SEARS: Thank you.

10 MR. CARROLL: Yes, sir.

11 MR. BUCKWALTER: Len Buckwalter,

12 Avionics Communications.

13 Hasn\'t there been a statement

14 somewhere from the federal government about

15 ending the standard positioning service in

16 GPS and leaving the precision positioning

17 system open, decoded, for anybody to use?

18 And if that happens, wouldn\'t that avoid the

19 infrastructure of the differential ground

20 stations, or however it will be done?

21 MR. SHAW: The short answer to your

22 question is no. The standard positioning

73

1 service will be continued to be offered for

2 the civil community, and there will continue

3 to be an encrypted precise positioning

4 service offered for the military. A couple

5 of things are going to happen in the near

6 future that is going to improve the civil

7 service considerably that is broadcast from

8 the basic constellation. Arguably.

9 In the next year or two, certainly

10 before 2006, selective availability will be

11 set zero, and the accuracy of the

12 constellation providing the civil service

13 will become very much improved.

14 The second thing, of course, that

15 we have talked about over the last couple of

16 days is, we are modernizing the constellation

17 to start broadcasting a second and a third

18 signal for the civil use. And those are the

19 activities that are underway that is going to

20 improve the civil service for the civil

21 users.

22 I have never seen any statement

74

1 that says that the precise positioning

2 service basically will ‑‑ the encryption will

3 be turned off, and that will become the

4 common service for both civil and military.

5 And I don\'t see that happening in the future.

6 MR. MACALUSO: I\'d just add briefly

7 the augmentation systems provide the

8 integrity features to users, which is very

9 important. And even the setting SA to zero

10 won\'t serve that requirement for critical

11 transportation uses. So the augmentations

12 will continue to be necessary.

13 MR. SMITH: I\'m Bernal Smith. I

14 represent FAI, which is more than a million

15 pilots worldwide, and SSA.

16 And my question concerns an item

17 that Mr. Scull briefly mentioned. But first

18 I would like to address the issue of

19 redundancy. I started flying four‑engine

20 airplanes more than 50 years ago, and we used

21 to shut down engines all the time. And when

22 we went to jets, why, we had four engines,

75

1 and we had to shut down engines.

2 They are flying two‑engine

3 airplanes across the pond now, and they don\'t

4 shut down very many engines. But a group

5 that I represent never shuts down an engine.

6 That is gliders. We don\'t have any. We

7 never have to shut an engine down. So

8 redundancy works both ways, Mr. Bond.

9 My question concerns the inertial

10 issue. It is not a radionavigation thing,

11 because it is self‑contained, and it is

12 something that is kind of nice to have,

13 because it is not ground‑based. And it seems

14 to me that maybe there ought to be more

15 attention to that within the Federal

16 Radionavigation Plan. The munitions inertial

17 systems that are being developed have a lot

18 of promise if everybody has one, like GPS.

19 There is no reason that GPS would be as cheap

20 as it is if it wasn\'t for all of the people

21 outside aviation, who are such a much greater

22 public for the use of that system than the

76

1 aviation. We\'re just small potatoes in

2 aviation. If you add all of us together,

3 it\'s still small potatoes. I don\'t know

4 Mr. Nishiguchi is still here from Japan, but

5 when we had a CGSIC meeting over in Japan,

6 there was almost 600 people at the meeting.

7 And they were all, you know, automotive, that

8 ITS type of people, I guess, a great

9 percentage of them.

10 So if an inertial system can be

11 developed that is going to be put in millions

12 of vehicles, why it is going to be

13 inexpensive for aviation, and even my glider

14 pilot and balloon pilots will be able to

15 afford the thing. And that is going to be a

16 much better redundant system than some

17 ground‑based system or satellite‑based

18 system, I think.

19 So please look into that, folks.

20 MR. SHAW: And I think all of us

21 wholeheartedly agree with you, and we will

22 take that under advisement and see if there

77

1 is an appropriate place to enter it into the

2 Federal Radionavigation Plan.

3 Thank you.

4 MR. CARROLL: Further questions?

5 Yes, Dave.

6 Dave, could you try to use the

7 mike, please? The mike not only helps us,

8 just as a comment. It not only helps us, but

9 really helps the stenographer. She is making

10 voice tape recordings.

11 MR. SCULL: Well, there was an item

12 I had overlooked in my little prepared

13 statement there, and that is ADSB. I have

14 looked through the FRP. I\'m not sure where

15 it was addressed. But I attended the RTCA

16 symposium last November, and there was

17 certainly a lot of activity on ADSB.

18 And that has, I would think, a big

19 impact on the way we do things in air traffic

20 control studies and such. I think it would

21 be helpful to have that particular area

22 addressed.

78

1 This is not radionavigation

2 oriented, but the other factor that made me

3 think of ADS is the new 406 ELT, emergency

4 locator transmitter, that will be added here

5 in a few years in all aircraft. From what I

6 can find out, this unit costs about \$5,000,

7 and I don\'t think many glider pilots or many

8 general aviation pilots are going to be

9 willing to spend that type of money. I\'m

10 sure there is going to be a lot of commotion

11 by AOPA and others on having to equip with a

12 406 ELT.

13 ADSB is not an ELT, but could serve

14 that function of locating a downed aircraft.

15 We can make the avionics in an aircraft,

16 harden them to the standpoint that they would

17 survive a crash. And that is one of the

18 requirements, of course, of an ELT. But

19 there is a way to save a lot of money in the

20 general aviation and, well, the community if

21 we didn\'t have to equip with ELTs, if ADSB

22 could perform that function.

79

1 Thank you.

2 MR. CARROLL: Dave Olsen, would you

3 have anything to say on ADSB?

4 MR. OLSEN: Thank you for your

5 remarks, Dave.

6 There is a tremendous amount of

7 research and analysis going on within the

8 Federal Aviation Administration on automatic

9 dependent surveillance, the broadcast form,

10 or ADSB, as you mentioned. That is certainly

11 an application that requires as the input

12 onboard an aircraft having the location, the

13 self‑determined location of the aircraft,

14 something that you don\'t get with

15 conventional nav aids, with flying on VORs or

16 DMEs on the airways, the so‑called point‑to‑

17 point navigation which you do without

18 reference to latitude and longitude.

19 Aircraft, of course, do have

20 latitude and longitude today if they have the

21 so‑called flight management systems, which

22 may combine the solutions and calculate

80

1 positions based upon the VORs or the DMEs.

2 Or if they have inertial systems onboard, or

3 if they ‑‑ conceivably, if they have Loran

4 onboard, and certainly if they have GPS,

5 either with or without augmentation from the

6 WAAS and LAAS.

7 The accuracy you need, of course,

8 depends on the application, and the S in the

9 ADSB being surveillance. What is it is

10 basically a surveillance motion. So the

11 navigation is the input to, then, the

12 aircraft broadcasting its position, saying,

13 \"Here is who I am and here is where I am.\"

14 I think that is the distinction,

15 Dave. There is a tremendous amount of work

16 going on in ADSB. We have a number of forums

17 within aviation. We have FAA documents such

18 as the national aerospace system architecture

19 which, to a greater or lesser extent, spell

20 out what our plans and our research and

21 analysis schedule is for those systems. But

22 I think we need to consider, once again, the

81

1 forum.

2 The FRP, Federal Radionavigation

3 Plan, talks about primarily the government

4 provided radionavigation services. So we are

5 talking about services provided by the U.S.

6 government which put signals in space for use

7 by the users. GPS does that. It\'s certainly

8 an enabling technology for ADSB. Many more

9 platforms will have the reference to latitude

10 and longitude, the ability to do what we call

11 area navigation or RNAV, as it is termed in

12 aviation.

13 Planes can do RNAV today without

14 satellites, again based on inertial or some

15 other technology. What bringing satellite

16 navigation will do is it will level the

17 playing field. It will bring that RNAV

18 capability to, we envision, a much wider

19 percentage of the aircraft weight across all

20 spectrum of aviation, from general aviation,

21 from the small private planes, on up through

22 commercial transport category aircraft.

82

1 And it may be interesting to know

2 that there is a substantial population of the

3 transport category aircraft today that do not

4 have that RNAV capability. All the jets you

5 see flying up there that serve the major air

6 carriers, not all of those have inertial

7 systems. And we\'re talking again, and I

8 don\'t know the numbers offhand, but we are

9 talking maybe there is 30 to 40 percent of

10 aircraft that do not have things like

11 inertials, do not have latitude and longitude

12 navigation.

13 But back to your point, Dave. Yes,

14 there is a lot of energy around ADSB. There

15 is a lot going on. It is just a question of

16 whether the Federal Radionavigation Plan is

17 the proper place to talk about all that.

18 MR. SCULL: I think the paragraph

19 showing that the GPS, the \-\-\-- navigation

20 system, could be or is an integral part of

21 ADSB would probably justify it.

22 MR. OLSEN: We\'ll certainly put

83

1 that on the list, and please take the

2 opportunity to remind us, too, if you don\'t

3 see it in there.

4 MR. CARROLL: Okay.

5 Dr. Lilley?

6 DR. LILLEY: Thanks. I\'m Bob

7 Lilley. I work with Illgen Simulation,

8 formerly with Ohio University. And we have

9 been a long time involved in this, a longtime

10 supporter of the FRP.

11 Dave, I\'ll take them in reverse

12 order. I have a few things to mention here.

13 The ADSB, I agree, it is important

14 to point out that it is nav. But it is

15 serving a surveillance function. And it is

16 also important to remember that the basic

17 navigation structure, as described in that

18 architecture and described in the strategic

19 plan, is based on communications, navigation,

20 and surveillance, and the assumption of all

21 three of these being independent of each

22 other. If you mix the two, you lose

84

1 something. You lose options when times get

2 tough.

3 So it is very important that if, as

4 the strategic plan points out, one of the

5 first goals of ADSB is to supplement radar,

6 or in fact, to replace radar in

7 radar‑challenged areas, where are those

8 likely to be? Near the ground.

9 That means that whatever replaces

10 the radar, the ADSB has to have the same

11 integrity, the same availability, the same

12 general characteristics as the radar in order

13 to replace it. How do you do that? With a

14 single‑thread system operating both

15 navigation and surveillance.

16 The FAA has recently said it is

17 difficult to say these days that we have a

18 sole means as navigation with satellites.

19 Well, if we don\'t have a sole means of

20 navigation, it is very hard for me to see how

21 we could begin to extend that to using that

22 single‑thread system for both navigation and

85

1 surveillance. Just a comment again, Dave,

2 for that same paragraph in the FRP.

3 I do know these factors are being

4 considered very, very carefully by the ADSB

5 people. I don\'t mean to see FAA is derelict

6 here. But I think the FRP needs to reflect

7 that concern.

8 If I might, Jim, a couple of other

9 comments, unless someone else is eager to

10 take the podium.

11 MR. CARROLL: About how long do you

12 think it would take, Bob?

13 DR. LILLEY: Just another couple of

14 minutes, I hope.

15 MR. CARROLL: Okay. That\'s fine.

16 DR. LILLEY: There is a secret

17 weapon in the room. I think that weapon is

18 the tendency to treat Mr. Bond nicely. There

19 have been several nice comments made about

20 him. I appreciate that, and I\'m sure he

21 does. I even heard the word \"peaceful\"

22 earlier, not applied to Mr. Bond, but applied

86

1 to the peaceful civil uses of GPS. Now, that

2 implies that if we intend to use it for

3 something not peaceful, we had better swipe

4 the MasterCard first, right? So it is going

5 to cost me money if I\'m going to fight with

6 GPS.

7 On the other hand, Joe Canny also

8 mentioned that the Loran question has been

9 contentious and difficult. I wouldn\'t want

10 to disappoint him by not being consistent.

11 The cost to upgrade was quoted, Curt, I

12 think, at about 120 million, 110 to 120

13 million. Back in Long Beach, I seem to

14 remember officially, two years ago, we

15 discussed the relative cost to shut it down

16 versus the cost to upgrade it. And the two

17 at the time were not quite that large, but

18 they were similar to each other.

19 Are they still similar costs to

20 back off or to move forward?

21 MR. DUBAY: At the meeting at Long

22 Beach, we had passed an estimate to upgrade.

87

1 I believe at the time we ‑‑ because of the

2 way we were carrying the figures, it was \$110

3 million cash money, and then the staff and

4 personnel necessary to carry out that

5 modernization program. When you add those

6 two together, that comes up to about \$120

7 million over about a five‑year period.

8 We had also been looking at the

9 costs associated with termination of the

10 system. And we were estimating at that time

11 that between \$60 and 100 million were ‑‑ we

12 have not refined that number further, to be

13 quite honest. We have been most of our

14 effort into trying to hone down the

15 modernization numbers a little more tightly.

16 And as we move forward in that process, we

17 are getting better figures all the time. But

18 the 60 to 100 is still what we are carrying

19 for the termination costs.

20 DR. LILLEY: So walking away isn\'t

21 as easy as it sounds at first bite?

22 MR. DUBAY: It is never easy.

88

1 Nothing is.

2 DR. LILLEY: Righto. Okay.

3 My last comment, Jim, would be for

4 Dave.

5 Dave, you mentioned the

6 marketplace. And this is something you and I

7 have talked about a number of times, that the

8 marketplace needs to capitalize on this new

9 Loran technology that is coming along. I

10 certainly agree.

11 The question, of course, goes back

12 to the old chicken‑and‑egg problem. That is,

13 how can we structure the FRPs so it

14 represents good government policy, but so it

15 also isn\'t accused of artificially

16 restraining or depressing the market so there

17 is a fair shot, a good target for an industry

18 to look toward when they can try to consider

19 making it a decision? Do we put a Loran card

20 in our integrated nav system? Do we put a

21 Loran chip in our LAAS receiver, for example?

22 Is this something we can work on for 2001?

89

1 Thanks a lot.

2 MR. OLSEN: Thank you, Bob. Bob, I

3 guess all I can offer is to reiterate what

4 Mr. Canny said, that the Loran issue has been

5 difficult at best. It boils down, I think,

6 to what is needed. And what we need to do,

7 then, is in our policies, try to reflect a

8 balance between what is needed for safety and

9 what\'s ‑‑ collect my thoughts.

10 Let\'s talk of redundancy was the

11 belt‑and‑suspenders analogy that Mr. Bond

12 humored us with. It is a good analogy, I

13 think. And redundancy is good. It is a

14 question of needed redundancy versus, let\'s

15 say, extra redundancy. At what level of

16 redundance do we need?

17 Yes, it is good to have more than

18 one system. Externally provided

19 radionavigation signals are not the only

20 system available. We speak of inertial. So

21 that is a second system, not one provided by

22 the government pumping electrons into the

90

1 area, but provided by onboard technology.

2 What that represents, of course, is

3 a shift in cost, a shift in cost from the

4 government to the user. One reason that the

5 inertial systems are not spoken of at length

6 in the FRP ‑‑ as we have said, I think,

7 several times, they are not a radionavigation

8 system. So they are not something that is

9 provided from the government to the user. It

10 is something that the user bears the cost of

11 implementing.

12 Another technology that has

13 tremendous application in aviation are the

14 so‑called head‑up guidance systems which you

15 can put on aircraft, and you can gain benefit

16 in doing bad‑weather landings, that kind of

17 thing. But you don\'t see those in the

18 Federal Radionavigation Plan. That is not a

19 technology ‑‑ well, it is not radionavigation

20 per se. That is also something not provided

21 by the government to the general population.

22 It is something that the user purchases as

91

1 seeing a business benefit or a justified cost

2 in doing a business.

3 So which systems we do, what is the

4 right balance, where does Loran fit that, is

5 Loran a necessary part of that mix? It

6 certainly has the potential there. It has

7 the potential to supplant other systems. But

8 we\'re talking, again, about which users will

9 utilize that. If you look at Loran\'s use in

10 aviation, it is used very largely today by

11 the general aviation community. There is

12 virtually no use by the commercial transport

13 category.

14 Where is that balance? What do we

15 need for backup? So the commercial category

16 fliers today have the VLRs and DMEs. And as

17 we have articulated our policies now in FAA,

18 it looks like we will always have some of

19 those systems around. That is our present

20 thinking. That has been articulated by our

21 administrator in public forums. We will

22 always have ground navigation systems.

92

1 Exactly what they are, how many of

2 them there are, how many ‑‑ where they will

3 be located, those are all to be determined.

4 We heard, and I think as Mike Shaw said, we

5 are talking no longer of phaseout but of

6 phasedown. And the question is, how do we do

7 that in an intelligent manner? What is the

8 right solution? What kind of analysis and

9 study do we need to go through to arrive at

10 that best solution, and the responsible

11 solution from the standpoint of all of this

12 being paid for by the taxpayer dollar?

13 So there are no easy answers. Does

14 have Loran have a part? Where do we fit in?

15 I think back to our question, Bob, of perhaps

16 fostering that development of the technology,

17 or at least not inhibiting it artificially by

18 an early termination of the system.

19 Tough questions, and no easy

20 answers. All we can do, I think, is do our

21 jobs as professionals and try to work through

22 the issues and come to the best solution. It

93

1 is not evident that there is a path, one

2 particular path that is going to lead us to

3 that answer, and just when that is going to

4 happen.

5 That is the best I can tell you.

6 MR. CARROLL: Okay. If I might,

7 let me take one question now and then offer

8 you a short break, then we can continue

9 following that.

10 Yes, sir?

11 MR. MORTIMER: I\'m Leo Mortimer

12 from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots

13 Association.

14 First I would like to address some

15 of the comments made by Dave. I just came

16 back from Alaska, and they have a capstone

17 project well underway to equip 150 aircraft

18 with the ADSB capability. And they expect to

19 be fully equipped by January 2001.

20 Right now they have about 12

21 systems flying. And the people that are

22 flying these aircraft are very excited

94

1 about ‑‑ this situation that we are in is

2 that you brings into the cockpit. And with

3 the complementary traffic information

4 service, surveillance radar will actually

5 pick up aircraft that don\'t have the ADSB,

6 and hopefully give you a complete picture of

7 the traffic in your area.

8 The other point that I\'d like to

9 make is the complications in GPS ‑‑ and this

10 has been addressed with a contract to the

11 University of Alaska in Anchorage ‑‑ to

12 provide a training program, which is in the

13 form of mobile simulators that they can bring

14 into a classroom which has a multifunction

15 display as well as a GPS which is going to be

16 installed in the aircraft.

17 And they went through a training

18 program, two or three days. And the people

19 who have taken this course are very excited

20 about it. And these bush pilots are really

21 not too much into electronic gadgets, but

22 they found it to be very interesting, and

95

1 they really have taken to this very well.

2 And I have even talked to some pilots up

3 there who have never seen a GPS, and they

4 spend a few days in the course, and they say

5 that this is really fantastic stuff. So I

6 think there is great potential here.

7 And if we can really get this

8 program going, I think it is an affordable

9 system that would replace a lot of equipment

10 in the cockpit, and hopefully it would even

11 replace the ELT as well as the transponder.

12 It does have that capability, potentially.

13 Now, the question that I would like

14 to address to the panel, are there any plans

15 in the architecture to add additional geos to

16 the WAAS architecture? As I understand right

17 now, there are two active geos. There are

18 potential two other active ‑‑ two other geos

19 that could be implemented. But are there any

20 other plans to provide additional geos in the

21 national plan?

22 MR. CARROLL: John, is that for

96

1 you? John Augustine?

2 MR. AUGUSTINE: Yes. There are two

3 geos operating right now. There is the

4 INMARSAT‑3s. There is one, the Atlantic

5 Ocean West and the Pacific Ocean region.

6 Within the next few weeks, the FAA

7 plans to put out an RFI, a request for

8 information, on additional geostationary

9 services. The plan was for WAAS, once it

10 achieved initial operational capability,

11 which is originally planned for the end of

12 this year, we would go ahead and execute

13 phase II and III of the contract, and that

14 called for getting additional geos.

15 Despite the fact that WAAS is not

16 going to achieve IOC in this year, they are

17 going to go ahead and still release the RFI

18 for the geoservices, because it is such a

19 long lead time to either launch new

20 satellites or procure some sort of leased

21 service. So the answer is yes.

22 As to how many additional geos we

97

1 are going to use, it depends on the

2 information we get back from the RFI. If you

3 look at the studies, theoretically we could

4 get by with one additional geo if it was

5 optimally placed. But, you know, the odds of

6 getting the exact orbit that we need are

7 probably slim. So it can probably be more

8 than one geo. So the answer is yes.

9 As to when it is going to take

10 place, the estimates are three years, up to

11 three years to actually get a satellite in

12 service in place from the time you release

13 the RFI. That is based on other people\'s

14 estimates ‑‑ you know, Air Force, DOD, other

15 providers who would be able to put satellites

16 on a regular basis.

17 MR. MORTIMER: This RFI would be

18 beyond the present INMARSAT capabilities?

19 MR. AUGUSTINE: Yes.

20 MR. MORTIMER: What is the

21 intention of activating the AOR West and the

22 Indian Ocean satellites? Is that in the

98

1 plan?

2 MR. AUGUSTINE: The geo that we

3 have now, the Pacific Ocean region, is

4 different than the Indian Ocean region

5 satellite. Right now we only have

6 authorization to utilize two of those. Those

7 other allocations are to other users.

8 Specifically, I believe it is the Europeans

9 who have that Indian Ocean region satellite.

10 So the RFI is going to take inputs

11 from all available sources. And then once we

12 get that information, we would be better able

13 to make determinations on what satellite

14 services we would use, what are the most

15 cost‑effective and most efficient.

16 MR. CARROLL: Okay. Quick comment,

17 Bob?

18 DR. LILLEY: When you answered the

19 question before about C‑129, do you mean to

20 say that the geos today can be used by C‑129

21 as additional ranging sources, correct?

22 MR. AUGUSTINE: No.

99

1 DR. LILLEY: Can they?

2 MR. AUGUSTINE: Again, it is a

3 specific question for the manufacturers, but

4 no. A TSOC‑129 receiver would not be able to

5 utilize that geo signal from day one. Now,

6 it could theoretically, but it is going to

7 be ‑‑ or you\'re saying just from a ranging

8 source application, and not using any

9 messages encoded on it? I believe it would,

10 but I can\'t be certain. I\'m not sure,

11 actually.

12 MR. CARROLL: Okay. Maybe somebody

13 from the audience could try that? If not ‑‑

14 if we want to get into new areas, can I ask

15 that you do this following about a 15 minute

16 break? We reconvene around quarter past

17 3:00.

18 My understanding is that Mike Shaw

19 has paid for our cookies as well as soda.

20 (Recess)

21 MR. CARROLL: Vic Strachan ‑‑ I

22 think that\'s your last name ‑‑ came to me,

100

1 approached me with a request to speak so he

2 could leave. So I would like to start this

3 phase with Vic Strachan.

4 MR. STRACHAN: Thank you. Vic

5 Strachan, Litton.

6 I appreciate the strategy of

7 consensus and the FAA\'s plan to allow user

8 choice to detect equipage rates. But it

9 seems to be leading us into some kind of a

10 logical inconsistency.

11 The FRP recognizes the need to

12 retain a subset of ground navigation systems

13 as a mitigation for the loss of GPS signal

14 and navigation capability. The other half of

15 the issue, though, is, what is it that the

16 aircraft is required to carry? Well, if GPS

17 is certified or GPS WAAS is certified as

18 primary means of navigation, and the aircraft

19 isn\'t required to carry anything else, so it

20 won\'t be ‑‑ it is not required to carry the

21 navigation equipment necessary to use the

22 backup. That becomes the user\'s choice.

101

1 Now, we do recognize the need for a

2 backup because we think there may be a safety

3 issue. So now the user gets to choose

4 whether he thinks there is a safety issue.

5 But he is not a position to make that

6 decision. He doesn\'t know how many other

7 users will opt for no backup. So would he be

8 in a sky full of aircraft that are lost, or

9 will he be the only one that is lost? In the

10 case he is the only one that has lost, air

11 traffic can take control quite adequately.

12 But if everybody else decides to do it, then

13 it is dangerous.

14 He also isn\'t in a position to

15 decide whether air traffic control can cope

16 with loss of signal. Now, so the only thing

17 the user really knows is that the FAA said it

18 is okay to equip just with GPS. Now, since

19 the FAA is not given to certify aircraft that

20 are unsafe to fly, that is essentially an

21 endorsement for not carrying a backup. And

22 yet the FRP recognizes the requirement for a

102

1 backup, or at least recognizes that there may

2 be a requirement for a backup. So the FRP

3 hasn\'t decided that it is safe yet.

4 So I don\'t see quite how we can

5 afford to let users make individual choices

6 about whether they carry a backup or not.

7 Thank you.

8 MR. CARROLL: I think this one

9 works, Dave. We may be down to one ‑‑

10 MR. OLSEN: Vic, I\'m not sure there

11 was a question in there. I appreciate your

12 statements.

13 I would ‑‑ my tendency is to look

14 to the back of the room, to someone who

15 perhaps can talk to those issues that have to

16 do more with certification and approvals for

17 flight. That is not my forte, but let me

18 make a couple of attempts to address some of

19 your thoughts there.

20 I believe that certainly the plan

21 is to give approvals or certifications, if

22 you will. And there are probably some

103

1 subtleties there I don\'t appreciate between

2 those two words, but certainly to approve

3 eventually the carriage of both satellite

4 navigation equipment for primary means

5 approval, as you stated, which means that it

6 is the only equipment required on an aircraft

7 for a particular flight operation, a

8 particular phase of flight, whatever that

9 approval carries.

10 In that case, I believe it is the

11 perspective from the agency and from the

12 approval authorities within the agency that a

13 loss of signal or a backup‑required

14 situation, as you portray, is not a safety

15 issue. Rather, it is an availability issue.

16 And that there are backups in the system,

17 there are redundancies in the system in the

18 form that we have COMNAV and surveillance, we

19 have an air traffic control system, we have

20 procedures or will be required to develop

21 procedures to cope with that type of a

22 situation.

104

1 And if, in developing those

2 procedures, which we have, to my knowledge,

3 not yet done ‑‑ we have not yet given

4 approvals for primary means satellite

5 navigation in domestic en route and terminal

6 airspace. If in granting those approvals and

7 developing those procedures, it is determined

8 that there is an unsafe situation, then I

9 guess we probably would not end up fulfilling

10 our plans of getting those approvals.

11 So that is about as much as I can

12 say to that, that the plan is to give those

13 approvals. But if it is determined at some

14 point that there is a safety situation, a

15 dilemma that is perceived there, that we

16 would not give those approvals. And anyone

17 in the audience care to elaborate? I see a

18 smile, but I don\'t see a raised hand.

19 MR. STRACHAN: Can I ask a

20 follow‑up to that question? If WAAS had come

21 on line as was originally planned, I had

22 anticipated that we would have seen primary

105

1 means approvals granted very soon.

2 Is that not the case? I mean, were

3 you not about to give primary means as soon

4 as WAAS became operational?

5 MR. AUGUSTINE: I see help from the

6 back of the room here, Hank Cabler from our

7 flight standards division.

8 MR. CABLER: Hi, Vic. I\'m Hank

9 Cabler from FAA flight standards. I\'m the

10 chairman of the satellite operational

11 implementation team.

12 Vic presents a number of

13 interesting scenarios. But the answer to

14 them is muddled a bit by the use of the terms

15 \"supplemental,\" \"primary,\" and \"sole means of

16 navigation.\" And I would like to answer and

17 try to avoid using those, if I can.

18 Currently, all of our uses of GPS

19 require that users carry navigation equipment

20 appropriate to the route of flight also on

21 board the aircraft. For instance, in

22 domestic airspace, if you use GPS for IFR and

106

1 you plan to use GPS to fly the approach at

2 your destination airport, you have to plan to

3 fly an instrument approach at your alternate

4 that is not GPS‑based.

5 Now, call that supplemental or call

6 that primary. I don\'t know what you call it.

7 But you have two IFR capable sources or

8 censors, navigational sensors on board the

9 aircraft. In most cases, that would be a VOR

10 along with GPS.

11 On the other hand, Mr. Bond says we

12 are not going to approve GPS for sole means.

13 And I would suggest that if you only have one

14 radionavigation source appropriate to your

15 route of flight, that is sole means

16 application.

17 In the FAA, we have called that

18 primary means, and that is our oceanic

19 approval, where you can have two GPS units, a

20 minimum of two, that meet the appropriate

21 hardware requirements. You do a prediction

22 before departure to make sure that you won\'t

107

1 fly through any holes in your ability to

2 detect and exclude faults in satellites.

3 And once again, I said we call that

4 our primary means approval because we have

5 given you requirements over and above the

6 minimum. One is that prediction approval;

7 one is the extra hardware. But you are not

8 carrying another long‑range navigation aid on

9 the airplane, unless you consider the whiskey

10 compass a long range nav aid.

11 So I would suggest that we have

12 approved a sole means use for GPS, which

13 brings us where? Does it bring us to the

14 user deciding what is appropriate to have on

15 his aircraft? And in some cases, it does.

16 If we were to ‑‑ I contend that currently it

17 is legal in the United States to fly with

18 only a GPS on your airplane and conduct IFR

19 type operations, or IFR operations. You have

20 to be IFR‑equipped to fly VFR on top. And

21 that means if you go from where it is VRR,

22 you can get on top of the clouds.

108

1 And it is my case that you can fly

2 on top of the clouds with an IFR GPS unit.

3 Then you get to the end of the clouds, you

4 descend, and you fly a VFR approach, a visual

5 approach, at your destination.

6 By the same token, if you picked an

7 alternate site where the weather was really

8 good, and you didn\'t require to fly an

9 instrument approach to get into your

10 alternate airfield, I contend that you could

11 conduct that whole operation with GPS.

12 So maybe we have already gotten to

13 the point where we have laid it in the lap of

14 the user: Use GPS where it is appropriate,

15 carry the other nav aids where it is

16 required, or where you feel ‑‑ where you feel

17 that it is required.

18 We did plan to have a GPS primary

19 means approval at WAAS IOC. Joe Dorfler

20 (phonetic) conned us into using those terms,

21 and he was the program manager at the time,

22 and we acquiesced. However, when we first

109

1 used that terminology, the idea was to have

2 the same onerous requirement on the user,

3 that his alternate would have to be a non‑GPS

4 WAAS approach.

5 So in effect, we would still be

6 requiring everyone to carry at least two nav

7 systems, the GPS and the VOR, ILS, MDB,

8 whatever he needed to fly the approach of his

9 alternate.

10 And that\'s ‑‑ we haven\'t yet had to

11 change the primary means requirements idea

12 for IWAAS. And part of that is a problem

13 with the program itself. IOC continually

14 appears to be scaled back a little in what

15 the expectations are. Maybe we are not going

16 to be down to an ILS equivalent system.

17 Maybe we will only be nonprecision landing

18 system. Maybe it won\'t have the availability

19 we had originally hoped for at IOC.

20 And given failures or faults or

21 shortcomings in WAAS, we are following AND‑1,

22 Carl McCullough\'s idea that we\'ll relieve the

110

1 restrictions when we have sufficient user

2 acceptance and the system has proven itself

3 to be satisfactory for us to alleviate some

4 of those restrictions.

5 That\'s a long‑winded answer. I\'m

6 sorry I took so long.

7 MR. BRADLEY: Jerry Bradley, Titan

8 Corporation. I have got several comments,

9 and a couple of questions.

10 In the current FRP, I have one

11 complaint. I haven\'t read through the whole

12 book, but just at the start I looked at the

13 aviation requirements. And, Dave, I think

14 those are the same aviation requirements you

15 wrote 20 years ago. I would think that they

16 could be updated a little bit, and especially

17 to reflect what Bob Kelly told us or showed

18 us, that most of the requirements for

19 aviation are derived from four basic issues,

20 and that is accuracy, integrity, continuity,

21 and availability. That is something for you

22 to do next year.

111

1 We just went through a very nice

2 meeting that the Coast Guard sponsored here,

3 and a couple of things came out of that that

4 were kind of interesting. I found out that

5 GPS today has 28 operational space vehicles,

6 of which 26 are putting out a usable signal.

7 And of those 26, 17 are one failure away from

8 going off the air. It is only through the

9 hard work of the people out at FALC and \-\-\--

10 now that they kept the 26 satellites

11 operating. And I think that tells us

12 something else. And I\'m very happy to see

13 the recognition of the complementary nature

14 of GPS and Loran‑C to take care of that

15 problem.

16 Okay, here is the big one I am

17 going to drop on you. Also during this past

18 two days, there has been a lot of talk about

19 references. It is time that we in the

20 aviation community in the U.S., NACEO, and

21 maybe the maritime unit, change from WGS‑84

22 to the ITRF as our standard of reference.

112

1 That one, I would like to hear some comment

2 on.

3 MR. SHAW: I don\'t think anybody on

4 the panel is in the position to make a

5 comment on it. \-\-\--. In fact, I don\'t think

6 \-\-\-- U.S. Geographic Survey.

7 MR. BRADLEY: Actually, it\'s a U.S.

8 reference.

9 MR. SHAW: Well, I don\'t know how

10 to answer that question, Jerry. I mean, in

11 this forum, the people up here aren\'t the

12 geospatial specialists. I don\'t know if

13 anybody is in the audience.

14 Ah, Bill, you want to make a

15 comment?

16 MR. WOODEN: Let me just make a ‑‑

17 Bill Wooden. I\'m from NIMA. NIMA is the

18 people that put together the WGS‑84 system.

19 The two are in agreement at a

20 few‑centimeter level. And I assert that for

21 any navigation requirement, being off by 2

22 centimeters or so isn\'t going to make a

113

1 difference. I\'m hoping we are not flying our

2 planes that close together. We are not

3 missing planes on the ground by that amount.

4 So for any practical purposes, the

5 two are equivalent. The question is, how

6 often do you want to change documentation?

7 The international terrestrial reference

8 frame, they were modifying it every two

9 years. For a couple of centimeters, do you

10 want to change your reference system every

11 two years?

12 A lot of people don\'t like the fact

13 that DOD developed a world geodetic system.

14 It is a worldwide system. It has been

15 adopted by ICAO as the standard.

16 Geodeticists are the ones that argue over the

17 centimeters and millimeters. The

18 practical ‑‑ I don\'t think it is a practical

19 problem, frankly. I don\'t know what to say

20 other than that.

21 MR. SHAW: Well, is it fair to say

22 the United States is not considering WGS‑84

114

1 standard to ITRF because there is not

2 significant enough difference with that?

3 MR. WOODEN: I think that is a fair

4 assessment. I mean, we call the system ‑‑

5 the reference frame system that we have has

6 two names in this country. It is called

7 North America Data of 1983 by the civilian

8 community, and that is what the civilian

9 community got the Congress to pass as the

10 official reference frame for the United

11 States. For the Department of Defense, the

12 official name is WGS‑84.

13 But again, I reiterate, for all

14 practical purposes, the two are equivalent.

15 MR. SHAW: And I think this came up

16 also earlier in the week in the discussions

17 with Galileo, and Galileo wanting to use

18 ITRF.

19 You know, I think we have to at

20 least address it. But if in fact they are so

21 similar, is \"much ado about nothing\" being

22 made between the two different reference

115

1 systems? And I think the geodeticists are

2 going to have to, you know, either say that

3 is true or that is not.

4 MR. WOODEN: Agreed.

5 MR. CARROLL: Jerry. Jerry, point

6 of personal rebuttal, yes.

7 Is that Mr. Simon Kwok, who ‑‑

8 yeah. You\'ll go next, sir.

9 MR. BRADLEY: I have no dispute

10 with anything you said. The problem gets to

11 be internationally with WGS‑84. Also, WGS‑84

12 is still a confidential system. We do not

13 have access to all of the data.

14 And I think WGS‑84 changes just

15 about every two years with the gravitational

16 field changes, too. They keep coming out

17 with the little subscripts that change it up.

18 And also, the FRP does get down to

19 the centimeter. The FRP requires it for its

20 survey in there, which I think are 1

21 centimeter? Something like that.

22 MR. SHAW: The panelists like this.

116

1 We have duelling members of the audience.

2 Bill, rebuttal.

3 MR. WOODEN: Rebuttal is that when

4 WGS‑84 was established, it was established

5 with the Doppler system. The accuracy at

6 that time was on the order of a meter or so.

7 Since that time, GPS has evolved as a more

8 precise measure of the uncertainty. So what

9 has happened with WGS‑84, the uncertainty

10 used to be this much. Now it is this much.

11 The basic definition, where zero

12 is, has not changed. It is aligned with the

13 equivalent, the time, which was the BIH

14 definition of zero longitude, essentially.

15 So that really hasn\'t changed. The only

16 thing that has changed is the uncertainty.

17 WGS‑84 is a system. It is more

18 than just a reference frame. What you

19 alluded to is that there was a three‑year

20 project with NASA and DMA to determine a

21 better model of gravity or the G‑yard

22 (phonetic), which is the zero height,

117

1 essentially.

2 And again, NIMA made a lot

3 available, a lot of data available for that

4 project. And that joint project is what is

5 used now. It is the best absolute reference

6 for the G‑yard. There is a lot of relative

7 ones where you can say relative

8 differentially, how good things are. But the

9 absolute worldwide system, that\'s the best.

10 It is true that the world geodetic

11 system used to be classified. The earlier

12 versions were. WGS‑84 is unclassified. It

13 is available to anybody. It is available on

14 the World Wide Web. We\'ll send a printed

15 copy to anybody that wants it from NIMA. But

16 all you got to do is get NIMA\'s home page on

17 the World Wide Web, and it is available,

18 widely available.

19 MR. CARROLL: Okay. Dee Ann, is

20 this a follow‑up to this discussion? Okay.

21 Why don\'t you ‑‑

22 MS. DIVIS: I would like to take

118

1 advantage of the fact that Ms. Malouk is

2 still here and ask her why they want the

3 other standard, since the standards aren\'t

4 that familiar to me.

5 MS. MALOUK: I\'m not so sure it is

6 appropriate to speak about Galileo today.

7 I\'m listening very carefully to what is a

8 users\' meeting here.

9 Obviously, remarks that were made,

10 as I understand, were made concerning the use

11 of this reference frame for civil aviation.

12 And if you remember some things I said

13 yesterday, we are going ‑‑ we know that our

14 civil aviation is going to stay for awhile

15 with WGS‑84. It doesn\'t mean that we don\'t

16 have for other kinds of applications needs

17 for much higher precision. Hence, we think

18 we have to have an improved geodetic

19 reference system with Galileo.

20 I don\'t want to go further. I

21 don\'t think this is the place now to talk

22 about this. Thank you.

119

1 MR. CARROLL: Okay. Mr. Kwok?

2 MR. KWOK: I have a comment on the

3 ITRF because I\'m a surveyist. Therefore, I

4 look at this from this perspective. And I\'m

5 not the one who make up the systems and

6 design. I\'m one of the users.

7 I come, of course, with the ITRF

8 and WGS‑84 in this particular context ‑‑ is

9 that people ask me to survey the Hong Kong

10 Airport. And we have provide them

11 coordinates, lat, long, and also \-\-\-- high

12 off the one way that is essential for

13 landing.

14 But as far as WGS‑84 concern, there

15 are different stages of WGS‑84. At the

16 initial stage, they use Doppler, and the

17 earth center coordinate is about 1 to 2

18 meters\' difference from what is the ITRF. So

19 from a country\'s concern, because aircraft

20 flying from one country to another country,

21 they have to provide the coordinate according

22 to the ITO center.

120

1 I\'m not an aviation people.

2 Forgive me if I do not right for all this IQO

3 standard and things. But I do ‑‑ my job is

4 to provide the coordinate.

5 Then I ask the aviation colleagues,

6 what do you want, because the ITRF, their

7 WGS‑84. So they give me documents. They

8 cannot answer me, but they give me documents.

9 I take the document, and I read, so that

10 there is clear definition on the IQO document

11 that is WGS‑84.

12 So I have to interpret on that.

13 There is a small paragraph on ITRF, but there

14 is clear requirement that people have to use

15 ITRF. And I described the difference in my

16 areas, because we established WGS‑84 in 1991.

17 ITRF come into existence in 1994. So at that

18 time, we established our local systems on

19 WGS‑84 systems.

20 So when we tie up to ITRF later on,

21 we find that XY is little difference for ‑‑ I

22 may not be right. Either latitude or

121

1 longitude is difference by 0.3 and 0.1 in my

2 areas. But the difference is only height.

3 The heighting is about 1.5 to 2 meters. It

4 depends on what areas.

5 So personally, I think it depends

6 on how the countries look at the height on

7 WGS‑84 and at what time they set up their

8 systems. If they set up their system some

9 time before 1994, that WGS‑84, if they

10 already published the coordinates for the

11 whole country, it is less likely that they

12 will change all of the WGS‑84 coordinates to

13 revise the height, particularly in my area.

14 Maybe in certain part of the globe, the only

15 difference on the horizontal, but not the

16 height.

17 So it all depends on when they set

18 up their WGS‑84, and it all depends how they

19 give their value to the IQO, because IQO\'s

20 document require the height of the runway.

21 That height go into the document, and I think

22 it go to the all of the pilots and the

122

1 airports people, actually. When they come to

2 the airport, they know how high is the

3 height.

4 But, I mean, nowadays, landing ‑‑

5 the height ‑‑ this is also learning from the

6 pilot. I don\'t know. They said that it

7 depends on altimeters for landing.

8 Therefore, I don\'t know whether in future

9 GPS, we will take up the role of altimeter to

10 guide the aircraft down to the runway. So

11 the main difference is, when you are landing,

12 the difference is maybe 1 or 2 meters. When

13 you are taking category 3 approach, that

14 means at that time, height is essential.

15 But I know nothing about flying. I

16 don\'t know much about aviation. But that is

17 just my perspective from a civilian\'s point

18 of view, from a geography point of view.

19 So that is my comment. Maybe the

20 difference on ITRF and WGS‑84 ‑‑ now, I

21 think, no difference. WGS‑84 on \-\-\--

22 permits, broadcasting permits, always ‑‑ l

123

1 agree within centimeters. No difference.

2 They all really agree.

3 The only problem is that it depends

4 on differing country, on different part of

5 the world, when they defined the WGS‑84, and

6 on what set of values they provide the IQO to

7 go to into the standard document that every

8 pilot look at that.

9 That is my observation.

10 MR. SHAW: Bill, let me make a

11 couple of comments. I mean, first of all, I

12 don\'t think we are going to resolve here

13 today whether ITRF or WGS‑84 ‑‑ and I thank

14 you, Jerry, for this question.

15 Second of all, this isn\'t an FRP

16 question. But the whole question is very

17 important as part of our consultation process

18 with Europe, and particularly Galileo. At

19 the core issue, what we do know is if you

20 look at combined receiver that uses, for

21 instance, GPS and GLONASS, of which GLONASS

22 is on the PZ‑90 data frame and GPS is on

124

1 WGS‑84, there has to be some transformation

2 made between those reference frames, and that

3 indeed complicates the user, if you will,

4 position determination.

5 Out in the future, if there is to

6 be a Galileo that operates an ITRF and the

7 GPS continues to operate on WGS‑84, I think

8 the answer ‑‑ or the question is, are we

9 going to have to do a transformation between

10 those two reference frames before we come up

11 with a common position?

12 I don\'t think we know the answer to

13 that question here today. If the answer is

14 that there is not going to be any

15 transformation, that in essence the two data

16 frames are essentially the same, then I think

17 we are all okay. If, on the other hand,

18 there has to be a transformation that is made

19 between the two similar to the transformation

20 between PZ‑90 and WGS‑84, then I think we

21 have to have an issue that we have to

22 understand.

125

1 But does anybody ‑‑ I mean, is that

2 a fair summary? Does anybody disagree? Now

3 having said that, I guess we\'re back ‑‑ do

4 you want to hopefully close this out a little

5 bit?

6 MR. WOODEN: Yeah, I\'d just like to

7 close it.

8 What Mr. Kwok says is exactly

9 correct. The whole point of the ICAO

10 document was to force ‑‑ or to ask the member

11 states to take a look at their reference

12 frames, because the absolute critical thing

13 is everybody be on the same system, that it

14 doesn\'t vary when you go from one country to

15 another country. So that was the reason why

16 they specified a specific particular datum.

17 And as I say, the documents that

18 they requested were really to ask individual

19 countries to go back and examine the

20 questions, consult with their, you know,

21 geodetic people or, you know, whoever ICAO or

22 the aviation people felt were appropriate

126

1 consultants to answer those specific

2 questions.

3 Perhaps some of the documentation

4 wasn\'t as clear as it could have been. But

5 the intent was to have everybody look at ‑‑

6 to be on the same system so that you wouldn\'t

7 have problems with different reference

8 frames. And the idea is to, as I say, have

9 them be exactly the same. And that\'s all we

10 are collectively looking for in this room, I

11 think.

12 Thank you.

13 MR. CARROLL: Okay, sir.

14 MR. GOSS: My name is Ken Goss. I

15 represent VAISALA, a manufacturer of

16 meteorological instruments. And in deference

17 to Cdr. Dubay as a weather enthusiast here, I

18 felt that I would like to make a statement.

19 I\'m happy that the FRP has resulted

20 in a retraction of the previously published

21 termination of Loran‑C at the end of this

22 year. But I would like to make a request,

127

1 and that is ‑‑ and I\'m sure you are aware of

2 this, but it is very important that for

3 continued Loran operation that you need a

4 more definitive statement in the FRP. You

5 need to be able to put some dates there,

6 whether it is 2008, 2015. Thank you. I\'ll

7 take that.

8 But that\'s very important for the

9 users, because decisions are being made based

10 on the old plan, which had a terminating.

11 And people have made decisions that have cost

12 the ‑‑ and these are government customers ‑‑

13 cost them a lot of money to not use Loran,

14 because they thought it was going to be shut

15 down.

16 Now, we are going to keep it going,

17 but we say, well, we are going to examine how

18 long we are going to keep it going, but for

19 now, we are going to have it around at the

20 end of the year.

21 And we have gone out with the

22 demise of Omega and developed GPS‑based radio

128

1 science. These are instruments that go up on

2 weather balloons. They are consumables.

3 They are used to find winds, upper air winds.

4 And I know that this is documented in the FRP

5 under Loran‑C as a use. But again, I plead

6 for a more definitive statement. You need to

7 put some dates in there; otherwise it is not

8 a plan. It is not a planning document for

9 people to use. And this is important,

10 because it is a more cost‑effective solution

11 for this application where it is available.

12 So in order for users to plan their

13 operations, please try to work towards having

14 a definitive date. But I\'m happy to see that

15 it is not going to be terminated at end of

16 this year, and I thank you for that.

17 One other question. This is kind

18 of a detailed one. But in the previous

19 meeting, I have heard that the Loran annual

20 operating cost for U.S. Loran is about \$18

21 million. I think it was Joe Canny said \$25

22 to \$30 million.

129

1 Can you explain what accounts for

2 this variability? Or if it is a big

3 increase, how can it go up so much? I

4 thought we were modernizing these stations

5 even before, and I would have expected that

6 that would have resulted in lower operating

7 costs.

8 MR. DUBAY: Thank you. I\'ll take

9 that question.

10 First off, on the issue of the

11 termination date or any projected longevity

12 dates, I think that really belongs in the

13 form of DOT. But just from my perspective, I

14 would like to say that I completely agree

15 with you. It is an extremely important

16 concern. And I wish I had the answer for

17 you.

18 As to the second, I think I can

19 help on that. This was a question that was

20 raised, actually, at the FRP user conference

21 last year ‑‑ well, actually, it was two years

22 ago ‑‑ on the cycle. And I went through a

130

1 fairly extensive breakout of what the

2 operating costs of Loran‑C are.

3 At that time, the costs that were

4 reported at the FRP user conference had been

5 derived from some questions that had been

6 posed formerly to the Coast Guard and

7 Department of Transportation with respect to

8 what are the actual operating costs.

9 And the way that question was

10 formulated at the time, it seemed to be clear

11 that they were asking for what is the cost to

12 us to actually keep the sites themselves

13 operating. But it was not clear whether it

14 would need to include the support

15 infrastructure.

16 What we did since, as we were

17 coming up on a cusp, if you will, a decision

18 point on Loran‑C, is we set forth with a

19 pretty concerted effort before that last FRP

20 user conference to try and nail down what are

21 the actual costs to the U.S. Coast Guard, to

22 the U.S. taxpayer, to keep the Loran‑C system

131

1 going?

2 That \$18 million really represented

3 the actual operating cost of the transmitting

4 sites. When you add in the cost to keep the

5 navigation center going, to keep the

6 electronic support depot going ‑‑ we call it

7 our engineering logistics center, ELC, at

8 Baltimore ‑‑ when you add in the costs for

9 the electronic support from the maintenance

10 and logistics commands, then you add in what

11 it costs to do the other electronic systems

12 support for the consumables and for civil

13 engineering, that is what filled out the rest

14 of the puzzle, if you will, from that

15 previously reported number of 18 up to the

16 currently reported number of 27.

17 We think the 27 is really the best

18 frugality number that we can arrive at,

19 frankly. It has been my experience in this

20 town ‑‑ and I\'m just a dumb ship driver. It

21 has been my experience that generally the

22 answer you get is very strongly influenced by

132

1 the question that is asked. And what we

2 really strove to do with the full accounting

3 was to strive to answer the question as

4 completely and forthrightly as we possibly

5 could and account for all of those operating

6 and maintenance costs.

7 I hope that answers the question.

8 MR. GOSS: It does. One small

9 point, though.

10 You noted that there was a \$20

11 million request in the FY \'01 president\'s

12 budget. How does that compare with the \$27

13 million you need a year to operate? And

14 that\'s my question, I guess.

15 MR. DUBAY: And that\'s an excellent

16 question. This has actually been raised in a

17 different forum in a slightly different

18 manner. I have actually read in the one

19 piece of literature where it said that

20 Congress had appropriated \$47 million, or it

21 might have been \$37 million, this year for

22 Loran‑C.

133

1 What had actually occurred was

2 the ‑‑ the \$27 million operating and

3 maintenance costs are actually ‑‑ they

4 recur ‑‑ what we call a recurring parts of

5 the Coast Guard operating budgets.

6 It comes out of this lump sum that

7 Congress provides to the Coast Guard to

8 maintain its operational base that includes

9 its ships, its aircraft, its shore stations.

10 Loran‑C is included in that. So it is not a

11 sum that is appropriated by Congress

12 separately each year. It is what we call

13 part of our recurring base.

14 So in essence, it is something

15 that ‑‑ it is considered included in whatever

16 operating funds we receive each year from

17 Congress. And then we try and divvy those up

18 in an intelligent fashion each year between

19 our various operating facilities.

20 The other side of the coin is what

21 we call the modernization money. In the

22 Coast Guard, we call that AC&I, acquisition,

134

1 construction, and improvements. On the FAA

2 side, they call that facilities ‑‑ F&E,

3 facilities and equipment.

4 By way of a quick background, over

5 the last four years there has been money

6 appropriated by Congress to Loran‑C in \'97,

7 \'98, and \'99. Congress appropriated funds to

8 the FAA, which was in turn contracted, if you

9 will, over to the Coast Guard to carry out

10 sustainment activities. These are the monies

11 that were used to implement the automatic

12 blink system. These are the monies that were

13 used to buy new cesiums, new cesium clocks,

14 for all of the Loran stations, to do some of

15 the other remote control equipment that was

16 literally no longer supportable even for one

17 more day, and buying receivers, tiny

18 receivers and other things that were the real

19 vulnerabilities of the system that were

20 within our fiscal ability to correct.

21 The biggest problem in the system,

22 of course, is the tube transmitters. But

135

1 they are big‑ticket items. The amounts that

2 were appropriated by Congress weren\'t going

3 to touch those at the time.

4 The change in scene happened this

5 year where Congress appropriated \$10 million

6 to Loran‑C modernization and improvement.

7 And they also authorized the reprogramming of

8 some excess Omega termination funds to

9 Loran‑C. And those were the funds that are

10 being used to push forward the modernization

11 this year. It is going to buy the first

12 solid state transmitter to start replacing

13 the 11‑tube transmitters that we have. It is

14 also funding these cooperative projects

15 between Coast Guard and FAA to look at what

16 can be done in the future.

17 Turn the page to FY \'01 next year.

18 The president\'s budget currently has a

19 request in, a line item in for \$20 billion in

20 the FAA F&E budget, with a presumption that

21 that, if appropriated, will once again be

22 transferred over to the Coast Guard on a

136

1 contract‑type basis to continue this

2 modernization effort.

3 So the long‑term project is

4 actually fairly well underway. The \$11

5 million we received this year was sufficient

6 to accomplish the things we felt were

7 absolutely essentially this first year. The

8 20 mil, if we get it next year, will

9 certainly move us along, although not as

10 quickly as we would like, towards a final

11 recapitalization of the system. And of

12 course, there is the following years after

13 that that ‑‑ they will remain in the hands of

14 Congress to determine.

15 MR. GOSS: Right. Thank you.

16 MR. BOND: I get appointed. Good

17 enough.

18 Every now and then something

19 happens that is extremely important, and that

20 nobody notices it, okay? We may be on the

21 cusp of that. There is a study group now

22 underway, a task force within the FAA, to

137

1 have the agency adopt a performance standard

2 for navigation. We have really not had that

3 in the past, but one of the chaps within the

4 flight standards office is head of a

5 subcommittee of a sort to develop an RNP

6 performance standard for the FAA.

7 RNP means that it is capable of

8 RNAV, point‑to‑point navigation not tied to

9 some transmitter down there. And then the

10 number after RNP, .315, whatever it is,

11 describes the lateral accuracy of the system.

12 We have gone all the way down the

13 track upon which we are now debating with

14 considerable confusion about which system we

15 should need without the adoption of a

16 performance standard for what is needed with

17 this technology. In short, we have started

18 out with a solution, GPS, and then looked

19 around for the problem, for heaven\'s sake.

20 It is truly a dumb way to do business. But

21 maybe it is going to be reformed.

22 I believe that one of the reasons

138

1 that the FAA has a number of times in the

2 past attempted to get underway with an RNP

3 standards was something for a route that

4 would have one number, terminal maneuvering

5 would have another, and so on, is that the

6 adoption of a performance standard would have

7 revealed immediately that many of the

8 high‑accuracy navigation systems that are now

9 installed in aircraft, and Loran is one, and

10 flight management systems based on DME ‑‑ DME

11 is the second high accuracy system, and basic

12 GPS is the third. And all of those systems

13 are in many airplanes today ‑‑ those high

14 accuracy systems would meet the requirements

15 of the air traffic control system without

16 augmentation, and even without GPS on board,

17 if you had Loran, which is a .2 mile system.

18 FMS driven by DME is a .25 mile system.

19 All those high‑accuracy systems are

20 good enough for all of the foreseeable future

21 requirements of the navigation system. And I

22 believe that one of the reasons that this has

139

1 been killed in the past is that the satellite

2 enthusiasts have tried to kill this, because

3 it would immediately reveal that lots of

4 other stuff out there does the job just as

5 well, and you don\'t have to force pilots and

6 airlines and so on to throw away what they

7 have on board that does the job.

8 The adoption of this is not quite

9 here yet, and it has been tried a number of

10 times in the past. But in any case, some of

11 the folks you may have seen here have

12 excerpted something from page 85 of the

13 investment analysis report produced by the

14 FAA, for goodness sake ‑‑ this is not Bond

15 making stuff up, okay, this is the FAA doing

16 it. And here is what it said.

17 Many airlines ‑‑ this is listed as

18 a risk to the augmentation program. Airlines

19 may not choose to buy WAAS because basic GPS

20 or their flight management systems are

21 equivalent, and therefore acquiring WAAS will

22 give them no performance or operational

140

1 benefits.

2 I regard this as a stunning

3 statement. It is something that you could

4 have seen in my speeches two and a half years

5 ago. And if we move forward with RNP, we may

6 actually succeed in defining what it is we

7 are trying to do with the navigation system,

8 rather than just switching from one

9 technology to another.

10 Thank you.

11 MR. CARROLL: Further questions?

12 Mr. Bradley.

13 MR. BRADLEY: This is not a

14 question. This is rebuttal.

15 Now, Mr. Bonds, you heard me ‑‑

16 while I agree with the premise that you came

17 up with, to say that the FAA hasn\'t had a

18 navigation requirement, that hurts me. I

19 have been in the navigation program with FAA

20 since 1975, I believe it was. Well, you were

21 there. And we had trouble coming up with our

22 requirements to begin with. But if you look

141

1 at the reason the wide area program is not

2 operational today, it\'s because we have

3 requirements that it cannot meet.

4 The same thing goes for Loran‑C.

5 The reason Loran‑C is not an \-\-\-- approach

6 system in the FAA today is we have a

7 requirements that it doesn\'t meet. And,

8 unfortunately, when the Loran‑C system has a

9 problem, it is our writing in the

10 specification with the airborne equipment

11 that caused that problem.

12 But I think RNP is a great system.

13 It will help solve some of these problems.

14 And here is what the point has to be, I don\'t

15 care what you have in the aircraft; as long

16 as you can meet this performance, you can fly

17 in this airspace.

18 We can give that Sid Pereski

19 (phonetic). He is the one that pushed that

20 through ICAO. It has just taken this long to

21 get us to implement it in the FAA. I can\'t

22 defend that. But the concept has been there.

142

1 We have been working to those values. There

2 have been requirements. And my first comment

3 today was that we need to bring the RFP up to

4 reflect those requirements. I just had to

5 say that.

6 Thank you.

7 MR. CARROLL: Hank Cabler, do you

8 have any comments to make on this?

9 MR. CABLER: I feel like I should

10 pass on to the users first. But, Bill, I\'ll

11 let you go next, if it is okay with Jim.

12 MR. CARROLL: That would be fine.

13 MR. CABLER: I don\'t want to burst

14 your bubble, Mr. Bond. But Jerry is right.

15 We did have nav standards before, even if

16 they are only as vague as to say within the

17 operational requirements of the air traffic

18 system. And all of our RNAV systems that we

19 have certified since at least the mid‑\'60s

20 have maintained what we call ‑‑ what is the

21 equivalent of an RNP‑2 capability for en

22 route today.

143

1 And the first thing that became

2 obvious as we pursued the RNP work is that

3 RNP is not as sensor‑independent as people

4 would have you think. It is graphically

5 demonstrated in the new RNAV approach that

6 FAA published last charting cycle in

7 February, where the GPS approaches are not

8 caveated or remarked, but there are a number

9 of opportunities on that plate for a remark

10 that would limit the FMS capability to fly

11 the approach, such as FMSRNP is DME‑critical.

12 And if a critical DME station is off the air,

13 it does not maintain the same RNP value as a

14 GPS‑updated system would.

15 So that is one of the things we are

16 finding out. RNP is not the panacea that

17 people have thought it was. I do think,

18 however, it will be an excellent air traffic

19 management tool for the future as it is

20 developed. And there are public standards

21 usable for the whole aviation community.

22 Bill?

144

1 MR. CARROLL: Go ahead, Bill.

2 MR. SEARS: I\'m Bill Sears with the

3 Air Transport Association. And a couple of

4 comments.

5 I thought Mr. Bond was going to say

6 that all of these new navigation systems we

7 have ‑‑ and he talked about accuracy ‑‑ are

8 so accurate than they are more accurate than

9 the systems we have on the ground today to

10 measure. But he went on with something else.

11 As far as RNP, I personally think

12 that the biggest resistance to that is simply

13 no more than a major change. This would be a

14 big change in the FAA, a big change for

15 everybody, and that has been, like all

16 changes, rather difficult.

17 As far as WAAS and the FAA

18 investment analysis, I think you have to read

19 the whole page, not just part of the page.

20 But we went through an exercise to talk with

21 our airline members, 23 U.S. airline members,

22 about do they see value in WAAS, and they

145

1 definitely said yes.

2 Thank you.

3 MR. CARROLL: Bob, if ‑‑ okay. I

4 think we are all set. Have you return, Bob.

5 DR. LILLEY: Curt, I\'d like to come

6 back to the money just for a second. You

7 were correct, and I\'m delighted to say that

8 the Congress has shown consistent interest

9 over the last four years in maintaining this

10 particular navigation system for reasons that

11 they articulate in their committee reports

12 and what have you. And that amount of money

13 has been increasing each year, up to the

14 point where this year it is 10, 10 million in

15 fiscal \'00. It looks like 20 million has

16 been requested in the president\'s budget for

17 next year. And in fact, Congress may even be

18 ready to consider a figure more like 30

19 million for fiscal \'01.

20 The question is, is this another

21 one of those changes that Mr. Bond spoke of,

22 where perhaps we don\'t notice it, but there

146

1 has been a major change? For the first four

2 years, I believe it was, all of this was

3 instigated by Congress or initiated by

4 Congress. And in the past year, now suddenly

5 we have the number appearing before Congress

6 as a part of the president\'s budget rather

7 than being inserted later in committee.

8 Do you see this making it easier?

9 Does this change anything in terms of policy,

10 in terms of our ability to make policy or put

11 it into the FRP in terms of the

12 administration\'s, the government\'s, support

13 of this system?

14 MR. DUBAY: I really can\'t speak to

15 the policy side of it. I think it might

16 probably be better to Mr. Shaw.

17 But I will say that from a planning

18 perspective, placing a line item in the

19 budget in terms of modernization certainly

20 makes our planning a little bit more

21 meaningful, if you know what I mean. We had

22 been on the road to a termination at the end

147

1 of the year 2000. Not a lot of money in

2 terms of reinvestment had been going on in

3 Loran‑C for the last six years. That was one

4 of the drivers, I think, to this ‑‑ what has

5 happened this year, knowing that if we are

6 going to go past the year 2000, something

7 significant has to happen. And that

8 something significant is some investment into

9 the system to keep the infrastructure viable.

10 With regard to what effect that has

11 on the long‑term policy, I think Mr. Shaw

12 said that very well earlier in terms of what

13 the Loran policy is right now in the FRP.

14 And I think we have outlined some of the

15 efforts that are ongoing right now to provide

16 some of the background data that will help to

17 lead to decisions in the future.

18 Unless Mike has anything to add to

19 that ‑‑

20 MR. SHAW: Bob, you ask if this is

21 a major turning point. I guess what I would

22 say is that in essence, it is a judgment that

148

1 each is going to have to come to himself, I

2 guess, whether it is major or not.

3 My suggestion, though, is that

4 there is a lot of water yet that has to go

5 over the dam in what the final end mix is

6 going to be on navigation systems.

7 Dave Olsen stated it very well. I

8 think the good news from the Loran

9 perspective is, obviously, the termination

10 date published in the 1996 FRP is no longer

11 valid. I also would say that no radionav

12 system should consider itself safe and have

13 its future guaranteed, you know, forever into

14 the future.

15 The last thing I would say, I

16 guess, in the final analysis, as the FAA and

17 the Coast Guard and others go through their

18 analyses on what part of this current

19 infrastructure needs to remain, you need to

20 articulate to those user administrations, you

21 know, what the stakeholders think, what the

22 users believe.

149

1 And so I guess I wouldn\'t

2 necessarily declare victory yet. I might

3 have a party tonight; I don\'t know. It is up

4 to you whether you call this a major turning

5 point or not. Fair enough?

6 MR. CARROLL: Okay. Further

7 comments, questions?

8 Is that Mr. Montgomery? No? Okay.

9 Sorry. Go ahead, sir.

10 MR. STINE: I\'m Bill Stine with

11 NBAA, the other Bill.

12 And just in support of my compadre

13 over there, we too ‑‑ not speaking for 27,

14 but for 6,000 members ‑‑ are in support of

15 the continuation of the WAAS. Yes, we are

16 upset a little bit with it having tripped a

17 few times. But it is something that needs to

18 be pursued and followed on out.

19 The railroads took the push of

20 Congress to get the land to build it across

21 the country. So we need their forbearance to

22 get this one done, too.

150

1 MR. SHAW: Thank you, Bill. And I

2 just might add, a few weeks ago, the FAA had

3 a major stakeholders\' meeting that included

4 the organizations that have just stood up.

5 And I think it was almost ‑‑ in fact, it was

6 unanimous amongst all of the aviation user

7 groups that they are supportive of the

8 transition to navigation and supportive of

9 the WAAS and LAAS programs.

10 MR. CARROLL: Satellite navigation

11 is what Mike was referring to.

12 Any further questions, comments?

13 Okay. Maybe we have finally hit

14 the wall on an interesting three days. There

15 is one issue ‑‑ item, really, that remains on

16 the agenda. Actually, it is starting a

17 little late. I don\'t know if there is a

18 consensus here to get into that. It has to

19 do with the specific structure and content of

20 the 2001 FRP.

21 Maybe what I will say ‑‑ I think

22 Mike has some comments on this also, Mike

151

1 Shaw ‑‑ but what I would like to say to lead

2 into that is that we are going to be meeting

3 very shortly, a group of us, who are involved

4 in the mechanics of getting the RFP out. We

5 start ‑‑ as I said at the beginning of this

6 afternoon\'s meeting ‑‑ we start with user

7 meetings. We solicit the inputs. They are

8 recorded and transcribed. Then they become

9 key inputs to our process of developing the

10 2001 FRP, which has begun today, as Joe Canny

11 also pointed out.

12 To that end, I want to make a

13 comment that if you or your colleagues who

14 weren\'t able to make this meeting have

15 further inputs to make ‑‑ observations on the

16 current, the 1999 FRP, any inputs about what

17 should be in the new ones, to correct typos,

18 as simple as that, to some of the major

19 policy things that we have touched on this

20 afternoon ‑‑ to please get in touch with me.

21 I\'m not about to take a leap of

22 faith and challenge the audiovisual system

152

1 any further, even to the extent of writing my

2 phone number on a transparency to project.

3 But let me give you my phone number, and also

4 suggest that my phone number has been posted

5 in conjunction with this user meeting on the

6 Coast Guard\'s NIS web site. And that phone

7 number is area code (617) 494‑2908.

8 I do have an e‑mail address, but I

9 would rather ‑‑ you know, there is a

10 possibility for error, given this medium of

11 information exchange. So let me repeat that

12 phone number. It is (617) 494‑2908.

13 And again, we plan to start the

14 process literally in a couple of weeks for

15 the new FRP, and we really want inputs. We

16 use them, and we are sensitive to them.

17 What does come out at the end, of

18 course, I don\'t think there is not a soul

19 here or anyplace who can really guarantee.

20 But the effort certainly is there to have it

21 reflect the navigation policy of the U.S ‑‑

22 radionav policy of the U.S. government. So

153

1 if you have further things on them, I \-\-\--.

2 MR. SHAW: Let me just ask a

3 question. This afternoon we talked about a

4 number of items that we might consider adding

5 to the FRP, that being the discussions on

6 ADSB, on IRS, INS.

7 The other side of that coin is, are

8 there items in the FRP that can be

9 eliminated? As it has evolved across history

10 for various reasons, different things have

11 been added here, there, what have you. A

12 number of items specifically are, if you

13 will, cut and pasted from other documents.

14 And in many cases, those other documents are

15 the source documents for that information.

16 So we\'ll be going through a review

17 process to see, you know, if there are items

18 that are appropriate to remove, et cetera.

19 But since this is a forum asking for public

20 comment, opinion, et cetera, this is the

21 opportunity if you have comments about ‑‑ you

22 know, would you like to see a more concise

154

1 document, a shorter document? Is it about

2 the same thing or about the right length for

3 what you are looking for as a community? One

4 would hope you don\'t come out with a

5 requirement for a 20‑page encyclopedia.

6 But again, does anybody have

7 anything that they would like to say as we

8 start our review process, whether this is the

9 appropriate length document addressing the

10 appropriate subjects? And this is not a

11 solicitation, necessarily, to go for another

12 hour or so.

13 Bill?

14 MR. STINE: Just one thought, Mike,

15 and not to set a precedent by totally

16 agreeing with Langhorne on something. But on

17 this one, truly, I think RNP might be an

18 addressable subject at this time, probably

19 fairly high‑level at this juncture. I\'m not

20 sure we\'ll have the documentation necessary

21 by the time you need to go to press. But it

22 certainly is viable.

155

1 MR. SHAW: Okay. Well, we\'ll add

2 that to the list of subject areas to look at

3 for possible adding to the FRP.

4 I don\'t see a resounding ground

5 wave to reduce the length of it. I mean, is

6 it about the right description and level of

7 policy that you are looking for? I assume,

8 lacking comment, that the answer to that is

9 yes.

10 Mike?

11 MR. SAVILL: In response to your

12 question ‑‑

13 MR. CARROLL: Mike, just to ‑‑

14 could you put your name ‑‑ give ‑‑

15 MR. SAVILL: Yeah. My name is Mike

16 Savill from Northern Lighthouse Board in

17 Scotland.

18 I think it is important to

19 recognize that the FRP is regarded as a

20 reference document by the international

21 community. And I think that no one has ever

22 expressed any comment to me which criticizes

156

1 the content and the structure of the FRP.

2 And it is recognized as a very, very useful

3 United States document.

4 And therefore, I would suggest that

5 the structure at the present time is

6 perfectly adequate for the use of my

7 colleagues in the international community.

8 MR. SHAW: Thank you, Mike.

9 MR. CARROLL: Okay. It looks like

10 we have truly arrived at the end of the road

11 for this phase. We touched on, this

12 afternoon, many topics. Really quickly, it

13 is about C‑29 receivers, are they acceptable

14 for LAAS and WAAS? There was a report on

15 the ‑‑ Langhorne Bond talked about NAUSS and

16 GAUSS and all these Loran‑based systems and

17 how they are starting to have a resurgence in

18 Europe. Dave Scull made a presentation,

19 among other things, seeking a wider range of

20 user forms going out ‑‑ a little more

21 outreach, I think, basically.

22 There was also a lot of type

157

1 discussion on the level of redundancies, what

2 is appropriate for back‑up systems: Is it

3 possible, just because something is

4 redundant, that it really is beneficial

5 operationally, or does it have a cost

6 benefit? Does it meet the safety‑of‑life

7 issues that are so critical to all of these

8 systems? And a lot of practical discussions:

9 Ultra wideband, interference issues, some

10 discussion on ADSB. Then getting into the

11 appropriateness of various systems like

12 inertial nav systems, to what extent we

13 should address them in the FRP.

14 The resolution of these, of course,

15 is an going process, for the most part. But

16 it was broad‑based enough, as I see things,

17 to have made this a very useful and, I think,

18 a successful meeting.

19 We will have a very similar meeting

20 in about three months, or at least at the end

21 of June at San Diego, which will be the same

22 venue that the IAINION meeting will occur.

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1 And we will have a full day to get inputs.

2 I\'m not sure how many of you will also be at

3 that. But that will be a user meeting much

4 like this, the second major user input forum

5 for this FRP. If you can make it, that\'s

6 fine. We will be there.

7 We will continue to work all summer

8 on the new FRP. And again, if you can

9 contact me or anybody whose trail winds up at

10 the working group committee, your inputs

11 again will be welcome through this process,

12 which will last well into the new ‑‑ well,

13 into the new fiscal year. It will go into

14 the fall at least. If you recall the

15 schedule, we hope to have an approval copy

16 ready by around Christmas time. So that is

17 the time line for our process on assimilating

18 inputs to the new FRP.

19 Again, thank you very much for your

20 participation.

21 MR. AUGUSTINE: Excuse me, Jim.

22 Right before we leave, I just wanted to make

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1 one clarifying comment, since we are at the

2 recap portion.

3 Dr. Lilley raised a question right

4 before break about can the TSOC‑129 receiver

5 utilize the geobroadcast as a ranging source

6 for the solution? And during the break, not

7 everyone got the benefit of the answer.

8 A couple of gentlemen at the break

9 and had ‑‑ the answer was a distinct no. So

10 I did want to give everyone the benefit of

11 the answer before we go as a clarifying

12 point.

13 MR. CARROLL: Thanks very much.

14 MR. AUGUSTINE: Thank you.

15 MR. CARROLL: Okay. We\'re all

16 done, and thank you again very much.

17 (Whereupon, at 4:43 p.m., the

18 PROCEEDINGS were adjourned.)

19 \* \* \* \* \*

20

21

22