On June 22, the American aerospace and defense AI company, ASI announced that they had been awarded an $875 million multi-year software and AI contract by the Federal Aviation Administration to deploy the Flow Management Data & Services (FMDS) and Strategic Management of Airspace, Routing, and Trajectories (SMART) programs:

As SMART and FMDS are deployed over the next 12 to 24 months, the FAA is expected to gain enhanced ability to anticipate and manage disruptions before they move through the airspace system: improving resiliency, reducing delays, and creating a more reliable travel experience for American passengers who fly each year. [Emphasis mine.]

Just over 4 months later, on November 10, the FAA announced:

The Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories (SMART) system is expanding across the nation. After a successful initial rollout to the National Capital Region in September, the FAA will now use SMART in the airspace of all 22 centers across the country to reduce delays, reduce fuel consumption and improve the travel experience for the flying public. [Emphasis mine.]

And then three days later, as everyone knows, flights nationwide were grounded because, according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, “We started to have inconsistency in the data from the radars and our communication with airplanes.”

“There’s no possible way SMART would have impacted what happened,” Duffy said.

Officials attributed the disruption to overloaded switches and routers in the FAA’s aging telecommunications infrastructure

But the question isn’t whether the system needs an upgrade. The question is: what was the immediate cause of the overload?

For Duffy to insist that there’s no way SMART had any impact is an assertion that lacks any credibility for as long as he has no substantive explanation for what actually happened.

In September, NPR reported:

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the union that represents controllers, distanced itself from the new system.

“NATCA has not been involved in the design, testing, or implementation of SMART and therefore cannot speak to its effect on the air traffic control workforce at this time,” the union said in a statement.