Military Airline Operational Control: A Concept for Communication and Cooperation 1999-01-5543

Air Traffic Services (ATS) and Airline Operational Control (AOC) have developed independently as higher-level management functions to address separate, but related concerns of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the airlines, respectively. In today’s National Air Space (NAS), most interactions are limited to the results of unilateral decisions and communication of chosen options, with very little information about the objectives, constraints, processes, or rationale for those decisions being exchanged. However, the underlying philosophy of Air Traffic Management (ATM) and AOC is changing and the system is becoming much more collaborative.

Increasingly, the military is beginning to be a key user in the overall NAS community, as well as in the global airspace community. As the concepts of free flight begin to emerge, military users will need to employ methods and technologies in use by commercial airspace users for both ground and air. AOC has long been a key element is providing efficient and effective operations of aircraft fleets in the commercial arena. In a free flight ATM system, the parallel strategic decision-making roles of a military AOC and civilian Air Traffic Control (ATC) will need to entail a more collaborative AOC/ATC relationship. Datalink, both air/ground and ground/ground, is current technology that can be employed to increase the efficiency of the communications requirements in a military environment. This paper will address the development of a Military AOC Concept that utilizes the best datalink technologies available to allow the military to operate in a free flight environment while achieving military objective when world events require military action.