Costs, delays harm US air traffic upgrade - report

http://www.reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?type=governmentFilingsNews&storyID=8656504§ion=investing

WASHINGTON, May 31 (Reuters) - Sharp cost increases and delays in implementation are harming efforts to modernize the U.S. air traffic control system, the Department of Transportation's Office of Inspector General (IG) said in a report released on Tuesday.

At a time when air travel continues to grow, the Federal Aviation Administration has become focused on maintaining the system it already has, rather than increasing capacity through system enhancements, said the report.

Sixteen FAA projects like new terminals for air traffic controllers and equipment to prevent runway accidents were examined and 11 were found to have grown by over $5.6 billion, pushing total current costs to about $14.5 billion.

<snip>

The cost of making the Global Positioning System fully usable for navigation and non-precision approaches, the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), has grown 274 percent to $3.3 billion and is 12 years behind schedule, the IG's report said.

Another Raytheon program known by its acronym STARS, to replace controller workstations with color displays, has grown 194 percent to $2.8 billion and is seven years behind.

...more...

Busholini has wanted to do this for a long time (there's money to be made, after all).

terrorism".

From a report titled, The Military/Industrial Complex in the Conflict for Power:


Among the big four defense contractors Lockheed Martin
has 939 facilities in 457 cities in 45 states, Northrop Grumman is located
in 44 states, Boeing has 62 facilities in 27 states and Raytheon has 79 sites
in 26 states. These are the majority of their production facilities.

..snip..

The Pentagon processes 75% of all U.S. military
foreign sales. This means the Department of Defense (DOD) negotiates
the terms, collects the funds and disburses them to U.S. contractors.
Military production has also been protected from globalization in
two important areas. Financing is protected from speculative capital
swings because of guaranteed state funding, and the national market is an
unchallenged monopoly. For example, Raytheon is financed by more than
4,000 military funded programs and is included in over 450 major
programs in the Defense Appropriations Bill of 2002. With the War on
Terrorism defense contractors are now adopting military hardware for
internal security use deepening the national character of their market. This
market and financing is essentially untouched by global competition.
The nationalist character of production in clearly reflected in the
most important military manufacturer’s organization, The National
Defense Industrial Association has 9,000 corporate affiliates and 26,000
individual members with no foreign membership. The Association
maintains close coordination with the DOD functioning through 34
committees, each with direct access and a working relationship with the
military. Divided up among these contractors is the largest single slice of
8
the federal government’s budget. Current military spending has hit $383
billion with $62 billion for procurement and $51 billion in research and
development.
The industry also has powerful political influence. At the
Republican National Convention of 2000 Lockheed's vice president for
corporate strategy and development boasted that he “wrote the
Republican Party's foreign policy platform.”

cont'd

http://www.net4dem.org/mayglobal/Papers/JerryHarris_MilitaryIndustrialComplex.pdf