NAC Aeronautics Committee Minutes | March 2019 | Page 1 of 8

NASA Advisory Council Aeronautics Committee Meeting

March 20, 2019

NASA Headquarters

Washington, DC

Welcome

Mr. John Borghese, committee chairman, called the meeting to order and welcomed 

everyone. He asked everyone present in the room to introduce themselves with name 

and affiliation. Several meeting housekeeping items were reviewed by Ms. Irma 

Rodriguez, the committee executive secretary. Dr. Jaiwon Shin, NASA associate 

administrator for the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD), added his 

welcome and immediately began a discussion of the first topic.

FY2020 ARMD Strategy and Budget Overview

Dr. Shin described the ARMD budget outlook for FY 2020 and beyond. He noted the 

drop in the budget from $725 million appropriated by Congress in FY 2019 to $667 

million requested by the President in FY 2020. He explained the drop is due to a 

reshuffling of money within NASA related to a move of the Aeroscience Evaluation Test 

Capabilities (AETC) project from ARMD to become part of a new program under the 

Mission Support Directorate. This is due to centralizing management and funding of

facilities used by all NASA mission directorates. Dr. Shin said the net effect is that 

ARMD didn’t lose anything and that aeronautics will continue to be a major player in 

using and managing these national asset facilities.

Dr. Shin explained that in 2020 there will be four major projects ending: Air Traffic 

Management Technology Demonstration (ATD), Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) 

Traffic Management (UTM), Advanced Composites, and UAS in the National Airspace 

System (NAS). These projects represent more than $150 million of budget. Therefore, 

moving ahead into 2021, ARMD is taking this opportunity to rebalance its research 

portfolio to support both traditional and emerging aviation markets. He then described 

some of the program changes that will be made to enable this next transformation of 

what ARMD will be working on and reviewed some of the new approaches in how these 

projects and programs will be managed. Dr. Shin cautioned several times throughout 

his presentation and the ensuing discussions that ARMD must be able to quickly adapt 

to changes in the marketplace and be able to address technical barriers, including some

barriers which may not be considered as NASA’s traditional responsibility.

Dr. Shin offered some program highlights with the X-59 and electrified propulsion and 

offered some comments about the ARMD budget going forward several years. He noted 

the trend seen since 2013 of how Congress has appropriated more money than the 

president has requested. He attributes this strong support from Congress to the work 

ARMD has done with its partners and stakeholders to lay out a strategic research plan 

that is answering the needs of the nation’s aviation community, and the ability of the 
NAC Aeronautics Committee Minutes | March 2019 | Page 2 of 8

agency to clearly tell its story. Dr. Shin also thanked committee members for their 

contributions and advice, which also has had a positive influence on the support NASA 

Aeronautics has received.

Dr. Shin concluded his remarks by calling attention to the management challenge he 

sees in ensuring the entire ARMD workforce will continue to rapidly accept change and 

embrace new possibilities and opportunities as they work together to transform aviation.

Discussion

Mr. Borghese expressed his concern that AETC facilities are critical to ARMD for future 

research projects; so, given the size of the other directorates, will ARMD be able to 

retain its ability to use those facilities in the name of continued advancements in 

aeronautics? Dr. Shin replied the short answer is “yes,” but added that coordination and 

communication with the other directorates will need to continue to ensure that is the 

case.

Dr. Mike Francis asked if there was a process in place to ensure fair adjudication of 

priorities for who uses these facilities and when? Dr. Shin replied by explaining how a 

management structure is in place within AETC to make those decisions and that ARMD 

has a voice in that process. Related to this, Mr. Scott Drennan asked about facility 

utilization and if there was a backlog of requests. Mr. Jon Montgomery replied that 

facility use is high and where there is less than full-time occupancy the facilities are 

often upgraded or undergoing maintenance. 

Dr. Francis sparked a lengthy discussion about an integrated transportation system in 

which travel by ground and air, using different vehicle modes at various altitudes, and 

travel within local, urban, state or national regions is all seamlessly connected. The idea 

involves more than just NASA, but as NASA works on its piece of such a system it 

should consider how that bigger, future architecture might drive its research now. Other 

committee members and NASA representatives chimed in with opinions and related 

considerations.

Dr. Francis offered his concern that ARMD’s approach to managing missions such as 

the Low Boom Flight Demonstrator (LBFD) and Advanced Air Mobility is fragmenting 

engineers/technologists across several programs which will affect their self-identity 

within NASA and make it difficult to take advantage of each other’s expertise and 

remain aware of what’s happening in the larger research community. He urged that a 

management tool be found and employed to deal with that concern. Mr. Montgomery 

described some of the ways that ARMD is already doing this and acknowledged it is not 

a full solution but a step in the right direction.

Regarding the X-59, Dr. Francis cautioned that NASA considers the budgetary 

requirements for software and/or hardware changes that may be required after the 

aircraft is built and flown. He said that is hard money to chase at the end of a program 

and that a contingency plan should be developed. Dr. Shin acknowledged there is no 
NAC Aeronautics Committee Minutes | March 2019 | Page 3 of 8

money currently budgeted for those kinds of major modifications late in the program and 

that some program-level discussion of that topic would be appropriate.

Following discussion of this topic, the committee took a lunch break, during which an 

audible demonstration of the expected low-level sonic boom produced by the LBFD was

presented.

Recommendation to NASA (Update June 2019 - During the NASA Advisory Council 

(NAC) Meeting – the Council decided to hold this recommendation to a later time until a 

formal Human Capital briefing is provided to the Council in order to understand recent 

developments in this topic.)

The Committee is excited about the budget and the direction of NASA Aeronautics. The 

Committee recognizes the need to find a mechanism for NASA to hire engineers and 

technologists from non-traditional disciplines that are shaping the next generations of 

aeronautical systems. The Committee recommends that NASA Aeronautics, working 

with the agency’s Human Capital Management Strategy, actively engage in bringing onboard innovators to work on the difficult problems that the industry and academia are 

facing through a new, more flexible hiring and retention process.

Major Reasons for the Recommendation

Twenty-first-century aerospace is being rapidly shaped by the digital revolution. In 

aeronautical systems, new platforms ranging from those enabling urban air mobility to 

unmanned aircraft are garnering economic momentum, while the relationship between 

the pilot and airplane is being redefined for even traditional manned systems. The 

engineering and other technical disciplines required to address digitization are different 

from those that dominate the current workforce. Moreover, NASA can fulfill an 

important national leadership role in shaping this future by implementing research and 

development activities that integrate the complexities of traditional aeronautics with 

these advanced, emerging technologies to maximize capabilities, assure safety and 

help the nation gain a competitive edge in an array of these new markets. 

Universities have highlighted the pull by companies for students in STEM fields, 

particularly in the areas of data analytics, machine learning, deep learning and 

autonomous systems. Graduates in these fields are in significant demand with 

correspondingly high salaries. These engineers expect to work on challenging, marketdefining problems, while these new disciplines are themselves evolving rapidly. NASA 

is currently in competition with Silicon Valley to attract these individuals. To recruit and 

retain this talent, NASA needs flexibility beyond the standard government process for 

hiring and promotion. DARPA has addressed this challenge by implementing a new 

hiring process called 1101, adding considerable flexibility to the acquisition of its 

technical talent pool. NASA needs to think broadly and address this hiring and retention 

difficulty with their own dynamic hiring process. Perhaps establishing a new category 

such as Fellow, similar to what companies have done, is an example of recognizing and 

retaining specialized engineering talent. 
NAC Aeronautics Committee Minutes | March 2019 | Page 4 of 8

Consequences of No Action on the Recommendation

The emerging global urban, inter-urban air mobility, and other emerging markets are 

moving fast, and the U.S. is facing global competition. In order for the U.S. to stay 

competitive and a leader in this industry, NASA needs to address the STEM issues that 

it and the country are facing.

Finding

While very optimistic regarding the 2020 proposed budget, the Committee expressed 

concern about the transfer of the Aeroscience Evaluation and Test Capabilities Project 

(AETC) from Aeronautics to the Mission Support Directorate. The main concern is 

ARMD’s utilization of these facilities in terms of the agency priorities in the future. 

Given the focus by NASA to establish a presence on the Moon, the Committee has 

concerns over ARMD’s future ability to resolve scheduling and related resource conflicts 

when it comes to wind tunnel facilities.

 

Airspace Research Vision Beyond NextGen

Mr. Akbar Sultan, NASA’s director of the Airspace Operations Safety Program, provided 

an update on a vision for what airspace management systems research will be required 

after the current vision for a Next Generation Air Transportation System is fully 

implemented.

Mr. Sultan began by reviewing the four primary research areas NASA has worked on to 

enable the FAA’s initial vision for NextGen implementation by 2025. The first involved 

precision arrivals at busy airports, which NASA developed two technologies for and 

turned over to the FAA. The FAA plans to rollout these capabilities in Denver during 

2020. The second involved integrated arrival/surface/departure management of aircraft 

at airports, providing technology that allows an aircraft to push back from its gate, taxi 

directly to the runway for takeoff and insertion into a slot in the overhead stream. This is 

being tested at Charlotte and will be expanded to Dallas next year. The FAA plans to 

deploy this technology at 21 airports in 2021. The third area relates to weather and 

providing flight planners tools to adapt airliner trajectories in real time to avoid weather 

issues. The fourth area is UAS Traffic Management or UTM, which has been 

demonstrated in four Technical Capability Levels. Three of the four levels already have 

been demonstrated, each showcasing more sophisticated and complex UAS traffic 

management. The final level is to be demonstrated later this year in Reno, Nevada and 

Corpus Christi, Texas. Mr. Sultan concluded this review by saying, “These are the four 

huge impacts we’ve had upon NextGen.”

Mr. Sultan then presented an overview of what the next airspace vision looks like. Now, 

instead of a concentration on managing high-altitude commercial transports, all levels of 

the sky will be filled with all manner of sized-vehicles, each with very specific 
NAC Aeronautics Committee Minutes | March 2019 | Page 5 of 8

capabilities and mission profiles. All told, the number of daily operations could number 

in the millions. That’s significantly more than the 50,000 to 60,000 operations currently 

managed in the NAS today. Mr. Sultan noted that, to grow the system to handle that 

volume, you can’t just scale up the current system by making it a little better and faster. 

Instead, a complete transformation of the NAS is required.

Mr. Sultan explained that some of the keys to creating such a system are to instill 

flexibility, be far more collaborative, resilient to uncertainty and increase use of thirdparty services. In order to do this safely for all users, vehicle types, and potential 

missions, the current strategy is to anchor such a system around a service-oriented 

architecture. As an example, Mr. Sultan offered that if you're a package delivery person 

and you're operating at the low altitude, you will need a certain set of information 

services that will be completely different from an ultra-high-altitude operator, or from an 

urban air mobility type operator.

Mr. Sultan offered that part of the future research strategy is to be sure the research 

stays ahead of the need. There must be sufficient time allowed to develop, mature and 

demonstrate capabilities, so when the need is economically viable the validated 

technology will be available. In this spirit, much of the research legwork must be 

identified and completed if the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Grand Challenge is to be 

successful and lead to systems entering the market.

Mr. Sultan and other NASA representatives engaged with the committee in a discussion 

and exchange of information about very specific technical details related to the UAM 

Grand Challenge, as well as UAM, UAS, and UTM operations, and what are some of 

the potential research goals and plans that will enable those operations and certify 

systems as safe to fly. The availability of ever more sophisticated levels of autonomy 

and how they will be a factor also was touched on in the conversation.

Discussion

Discussion of this topic was brief. Comments made by Dr. Karen Thole and Mr. Anil 

Nanduri are directly reflected in the Finding listed here.

Findings/Recommendations

The Committee suggests that NASA show a return on investment on the airspace 

technology demonstrations (ATD) within the Airspace Operations and Safety Program 

(AOSP) and what they collectively mean for the future and benefit of the nation. If the 

AOSP program is not successful, we may not have a competitive urban air mobility 

(UAM) industry. The advancements in the air traffic control system are necessary for 

achieving a safe and reliable national air transportation capability. The Committee 

encourages NASA to continue demonstrating the technologies long-term to obtain more 

data on the impacts of the UAM integration into the airspace. 
NAC Aeronautics Committee Minutes | March 2019 | Page 6 of 8

The Committee also noted the reduction of the NASA ARMD budget starting in 2023 

and suggested that the success by NASA in these new markets for autonomous 

vehicles and supersonic flight could justify a higher budget.

Progress on University Leadership Initiative

Dr. Koushik Datta, NASA’s manager of the University Leadership Initiative (ULI) 

presented an update on this project. He immediately solicited advice from the 

committee covering three areas: increasing participation from non-aeronautics faculty;

improving the effectiveness of the peer-review process used in selection; and involving 

industry more in the ULI, especially in the research transition.

Dr. Datta reviewed the history of the project and its desire of inviting university research 

teams to make a more direct contribution in helping NASA achieve its strategic research 

goals. The first round of selected universities resulted in awards to five teams, each 

receiving $1 million to $2 million a year for three to five years. A second round of 

selections were made and solicitations for a third round is expected soon.

Dr. Datta discussed results to date in terms of technical, organizational and 

entrepreneurial categories. He said NASA is receiving high-quality technical proposals 

that reflect high system-level thinking, partner engagement, and multidisciplinary 

research areas. From an organizational standpoint, the teams also are doing well and 

Dr. Datta noted his pleasure in seeing university teams include undergraduates. There 

is also good involvement of the teams with industry, both to take advantage of their 

resources and expertise but also to lay groundwork for transitioning the research results 

to industry. Dr. Datta noted one case where Boeing is involved with a team and is 

interested enough in the potential value of the research that the company is planning to 

fly the concept on its ecoDemonstrator aircraft.

Discussion

Mr. Anil Nanduri asked if there was a metric of involvement of women and diversity with 

the teams. Dr. Datta said he didn’t have that metric, but it could be easily obtained as he 

is familiar with all of the team’s members. Mr. Nanduri then suggested that it would be 

interesting to see the trend in those numbers and that goals related to that should be 

considered. Dr. Thole suggested that encouragement to include underrepresented 

groups should be part of the call for proposals. Committee members then elaborated on 

this theme of diversity and inclusion.

In response to a question from Dr. Francis, Dr. Shin explained why in ULI the “L” stands 

for leadership. In summary it’s because these universities represent an “engineering 

powerhouse” within the United States and around the world. This gives them an 

opportunity to become leaders in conducting research, a role that can include partnering 

with underrepresented colleges, mentoring them, and providing them with an 

opportunity to expand their research capabilities.
NAC Aeronautics Committee Minutes | March 2019 | Page 7 of 8

Another theme of the discussion touched on the problem of attracting non-aviationoriented universities to respond to proposals from NASA because they do not see the 

relevance to their work. Dr. Francis offered autonomy as an example of a technology 

that is going to drive the future of aviation, yet universities who excel in that area are not 

showing an interest in ULI. Dr. Francis suggested that ULI may be a somewhat vague 

name and that it needs a tagline that will attract non-aeronautics-focused schools to 

participate in ULI.

Dr. Datta asked the committee for ideas on how to attract these schools that are not 

traditionally focused or even interested in aeronautics. This led to a lengthy discussion 

with many suggestions regarding branding and marketing ULI, managing the peer 

review process that is the foundation for how proposals are selected, and addressing 

the challenge of recruiting needed talent who may be swayed by Silicon Valley and Wall 

Street. No specific consensus for proceeding with any particular idea was reached 

except to include the finding as noted here.

Findings/Recommendations

The Committee applauds NASA on its flexibility on trying to find the optimal mechanism 

on the University Leadership Initiative. The Committee emphasized the need to assure 

diversity when selecting proposals from the universities and to track and show statistics. 

DoD agencies require Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) participation 

in certain research solicitations to insure diversity. ARMD may want to consider an 

approach along these lines. The Committee also found that there is a need to drive the 

message that aeronautics is not only relevant, but serves as a pioneering application for 

21st century technology innovation. NASA needs to be more proactive when engaging 

with and advertising these opportunities to the university community.
NAC Aeronautics Committee Minutes | March 2019 | Page 8 of 8

List of Attendees

Committee Members

Mr. John Borghese

Mr. J. Scott Drennan

Dr. Mike Francis

Mr. Anil Nanduri

Dr. Tom Shih

Dr. Karen Thole

NASA

Dr. John Cavolowsky

Dr. Koushik Datta

Mr. Jay Dryer

Ms. Jennifer Dure

Ms. Barbara Esker

Mr. George Finnelli

Ms. Laurie Grindle

Mr. Jon Montgomery

Mr. Robert Pearce

Ms. Cheryl Quinn

Ms. Irma Rodriguez

Mr. Justin Tilman

Dr. Jaiwon Shin

Mr. Akbar Sultan

Dr. Ed Waggoner

Ms. Alicia Wesley

Other Attendees (Affiliation Indicated if

Provided)

Mr. Michael Hirschberg (Vertical Flight 

Society)

Ms. Lee Olson (FAA)

FedWriters (Meeting support)

Ms. Abigail Casas

Remote Participants by Webex and 

Telecon

NASA

Ms. Vanessa Aubuchon

Mr. Gregory Dees

Ms. Michele Dodson

Mr. Shawn Engelland

Mr. James Harrington

Mr. Susni Idris

Mr. Paul Krasa

Mr. Nateri Madavan

Mr. Michael Rogers

Ms. Angela Surgenor

Mr. Christopher Teubert

Other Remote Participants

Mr. James Banke (FedWriters)

Mr. Joe Bertapelle (JetBlue)

Mr. Jeffrey Darnell (SW Airlines)

Mr. Josh Griffith (SW Airlines)

Mr. Mark Hopkins (Delta Airlines)

Mr. James Lockner (USRA)

Ms. June Mackie

Mr. Jon Merritt

Mr. Ronald Renk (United Airlines)

Mr. Henry Smith (Las Vegas McCarran 

Airport)

Mr. Chuck Stewart (United Airlines)

Mr. Rocky Stone (United Airlines)