The Trump administration is bringing the nation’s aviation system into the digital age, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announcing on Tuesday long-delayed upgrades at the FAA and outlining plans to fix Washington Dulles International Airport.
Duffy said during Trump’s ninth Cabinet meeting that the agency fast tracked the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) shift from copper to fiber infrastructure and committed to buying new radios and radars.
“Many of you have heard that we have an infrastructure made of copper. We have to transition to fiber. The last administration said it was going to take more than 10 years to complete the transition from copper to fiber. They had no plan to actually do it,” Duffy said, adding that the current administration has already completed a third of this transition.
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Duffy admitted that it is still going to take longer for the nation’s aviation system to transition from analog to digital, but the administration is committed to doing so.
“The rest of the world transitioned 20 years ago from analog to digital. We are just going to do that at the FAA, right now. But we’re buying new radios. We’re going to buy new radar. By the way, those radar [are] going to be made in America,” he added.
Trump and Duffy also announced plans to fix Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia, which they argued is designed poorly.
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“We’re going to turn that around and we’re going to make Dulles Airport… into something really spectacular,” Trump said.
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Dulles remains a critical airport as it handles the majority of long-haul international flights in the region, and is vital for diplomats, government officials, international organizations and global business travelers. It’s also a key hub for United Airlines.
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority reported that Dulles saw 9.3 million international passengers in 2023, a new record that exceeded 2022’s international activity by 26.9%.
Despite being a critical international gateway, the airport has long been criticized for its infrastructure that officials say feels stuck in the 1960s rather than updated to modern standards. For instance, officials have called on eliminating Dulles’ “people movers” – a type of airport shuttle vehicle officially known as mobile lounges – because they are outdated.
Trent Morse, a nominee for the board of directors of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority who is pushing for their removal, has called them a “relic of the past,” according to Axios.
Similarly, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has described them as “glacial” and “tank-like.”
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