Validating the incremental benefits of NextGen transformational elements

The NextGen Concept of Operations contains a number of highly challenging technical concepts to address significantly more traffic and operational diversity than exists in todaypsilas airspace system. Getting to NextGen, however, will involve a series of incremental steps, rather than a ldquobig bangrdquo leap to the future. When we look at the range of transformation captured in the NextGen Conops, the question on going forward should not be on whether or not to transform, but to understand the extent of transformation needed to address the operational problems that are likely to be present for a given timeframe. The purpose of this paper is to challenge the aviation community to assess and validate proposed transformations with a focus on understanding problems and the range of alternatives (technical, procedural, and policy) that could address a problem. For alternatives in consideration, we need to understand their value along the spectrum of implementation, and the conditions in which different levels of transformation make sense. This is of particular urgency for implementing capabilities in 2012-2018 timeframe, where the level of benefit to forecast problems needs to be balanced against the complexity, risk, and cost of implementing new capabilities. In particular, we need to not delay the implementation of needed mid-term solutions to wait for the maturation of longer-term solutions that do not have a clear, demonstrable incremental value.