Overview
- New reporting says the FAA has prepared a term sheet and is negotiating a warrant to buy shares in Air Space Intelligence, with the proposal set to expire at the end of 2026 and no agreement finalized.
- The company holds a 12-year contract worth up to $875.9 million to build SMART, an AI-supported decision‑support platform that began limited use around Washington, D.C., in September and only recommends routing while controllers keep final authority.
- A bipartisan group of 25 House Democrats asked the FAA on Oct. 9 to pause SMART’s 90-day evaluation and to disclose safety testing, controller training, and oversight plans, with a response requested by Oct. 19.
- Controller union and industry voices say controllers were not involved in SMART’s design or testing and have raised concrete concerns about outage plans, performance gates, liability rules, and transparency about how the AI makes recommendations.
- If completed, the investment would be the first known instance of the FAA taking an ownership stake in a vendor, creating novel legal and ethical questions and setting a procurement precedent that could affect future modernization and oversight.