A TSA Story

from Aviation International News Online...

TSA mute on who wanted $20.8M for D.C. ADS-Bs
by Andrew Wood

Ten days before the January 20 Presidential inauguration, the FAA issued
a six-page national security flight advisory describing airspace
restrictions surrounding the event. Besides spelling out the areas of
the Washington air defense identification zone (ADIZ) and the Washington
flight- restricted zone within it, and associated altitude and traffic
restrictions and other security procedures, the advisory also included a
section on additional measures taken.

Among a number of items in that section, the advisory stated that 12
law-enforcement aircraft would be on patrol over D.C., all carrying new
ADS-B systems to stop false intruder targets on radar scopes and added
that the TSA has requested $20.8 million to outfit approximately 2,800
registered general aviation aircraft permanently based within the DCA ADIZ.

This was intriguing news, implying that the TSA wanted approximately
2,800 aircraft to be equipped with ADS-B before the inauguration and was
prepared to pay for it. It certainly looked like an attractive idea.
After all, the FAA had already set a precedent by providing free ADS-B
equipment to Capstone participants in Alaska.

On the other hand, are there really 2,800 general aviation aircraft
based permanently within the DCA ADIZ? (AOPA quoted the same 2,800 and
told AIN it got the number from the FAA.) Local pilots suggested to AIN
that the number would likely be closer to 800 than 2,800. And in any
event, getting the TSAs budget request approved and installing ADS-B in
even eight, let alone 800, aircraft within the 10-day time frame would
have been a mighty challenge.

ADS-B for General Aviation
Nevertheless, $20.8 million was a fairly precise figure, indicating
that someone, somewhere, had done some healthy number-crunching to
derive it. FAA officials declined to comment and suggested AIN contact
the TSA, which suggested that AIN contact the Department of Homeland
Security. At Homeland Security, a Secret Service agent advised calling
the FAA.

A second call to the TSA was slightly more fruitful, with a
spokesperson commenting only that the statement attributed to the TSA
should not have appeared in the FAAs flight advisory. The FAA withdrew
the advisory one day after its publication.

Was this some sort of ADS-B cover-up? Possibly, although ADS-B bungle
also came to mind. Further inquiries revealed that the FAA advisory was
originally intended to be a two-page document but the agency added an
extra four pages of background detail, including the information about
the 12 patrolling aircraft and the TSAs plan. Four days after it
withdrew the advisory, the FAA again posted the advisory, slimmed down
to its original two pages, on its Web site.

A third call to the TSA drew the response that we have no current
plans to put equipment in private aircraft, while sources at the FAA
continued to have no comment, although one official conceded that
several months ago the TSA had inquired about methods to track general
aviation aircraft that could fly under the radar. But the source of the
$20.8 million and the 2,800-aircraft figure remains a mystery.

The inauguration went off smoothly, of course, with no false intruders
spotted by the ADS-B units in the patrol aircraft.