AAS, was it Ada

AAS, was it Ada

[Sam Harbaugh (AQ)]

I asked on the incose bb who was responsible for the AAS requirements.  The
following reply was posted.

From: "Dr. Pat Patterson" <patterso@osf1.gmu.edu>
Cc: incose list <incose-list@xor.com>
Sender: owner-incose-list@xor.com

-- [ From: Dr. Pat Patterson * EMC.Ver #2.5.02 ] --

>Sam,
>
>The requirements list and system specification for the AAS were done by
>Mitre, who facilitated a requirements group of stakeholders, including many
>"top gun" air traffic controllers from around the country, in a number of
>meetings.  This group was kept intact through at least some of the "design
>competition phase" of the project.
>
>PAT PATTERSON

It seems to me that the group should have been kept intact throughout the
project.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had described an IBM show display of an FAA console on which duplicate
aircraft appeared many times. There was a large round, color, CRT (PPI if
you're that old) with icons, each designating an aircraft.  Each designation
included a tail number.  I noticed many duplicate tail numbers.

On Fri, 26 Apr 1996 13:58:53 GMT
Ron Thompson <thompsor@ADMIN.TC.FAA.GOV> wrote:

>Scenario generation on that AAS thing would have been a
>difficult job at best, so the appearance of the same
>"aircraft" is probably not surprising. The display guy
>probably was a sales or marketing type, no clue as to
>what goes into such a thing, so your question was out
>of his league.

This is the second time in several months on this digest where a piece of
airplane related software showed lack of airplane domain knowledge.  I hope
that the real FAA software is loaded with executable assertions, integrity
checks, etc. to INSURE that duplicate tail numbers could NEVER appear
anywhere in North America or whatever the system boundaries are.

The demo software would not have to be the real software of course.  Its
just amazing to me that with all of the pilots and air controllers floating
around our society noone would catch such a discrediting error.

Also I don't view scenario generation for a marketing display to be such a
big challenge.  I would get some radio receivers and tape record ATC-pilot
traffic for 5 minutes.  Then play them back and write down the scenario.
Here in Florida I've heard "You have me going 400 knots in the wrong
direction", "You put me over the field at 10,000 feet" but mostly just
routine ATC steering commands and pilot reports that translate easily into a
script. Of course I could extend the artificial neural network based
scenario generator for Harpoon weapons officer training that was developed
on my Navy project so that a "richer" scenario would appear (if anybody
really cares please contact me for more info).

sam harbaugh