The Federal Aviation Administration starts operating SMART — Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories — in the Washington, DC area from Monday, the first live deployment of a system covered by an $875 million, 12-year government contract awarded to San Francisco-based Air Space Intelligence earlier this year.

The tool analyzes airline schedules, weather patterns and airport runway capacity to identify potential conflicts and propose routing alternatives before congestion develops. According to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the deployment details, the software is ultimately intended to function as the analytical core of the US air traffic control system once fully rolled out across national airspace.

Washington is one of the busiest stretches of airspace in the country, making it a demanding first test for a system the FAA has moved to operational use after months of internal debate and industry pushback.

A scaled-back start

The initial deployment falls well short of what the Trump administration once described. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who first flagged the FAA's interest in SMART in April, estimated at the time that the government would spend $12 billion on the system and said it could help controllers plan flights weeks in advance.

"This software will say, 'well, listen, we can see this 45 days out. Let's move some of those flights a little bit later, or five, seven, 10 minutes earlier, and we can resolve the issue. And so then you are not delayed,'" Duffy told CBS News in April.

The $875 million contract value now on record is a fraction of that figure, and some aviation industry figures consider the rollout's scale much smaller than what they had hoped for, according to the new reporting.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the goal is to expand SMART after a 90-day testing period, according to Politico. Until the FAA announced the limited scope, however, many in the industry were alarmed about how extensively the AI would be woven into everyday air traffic operations.

Airline objections shaped the design

Three airline officials told Politico the industry was baffled about how the tool would even work. Some feared the AI would create operational chaos by recommending that flights be cancelled or rescheduled to avoid predicted bottlenecks.

"We've been requesting and… talking to [FAA] and saying, 'Let's narrow the scope of this. Start, crawl, walk, run.' And I think ultimately that's what they decided to do," one airline industry official, quoted anonymously, told Politico.

As concerns mounted, the FAA held a series of meetings to answer questions and address objections. Scaling back the rollout appears to have been one of the agency's concessions. Officials also assured carriers that the AI would not be directly integrated into day-to-day air traffic management. Instead, the tool will generate alternative routing options when air traffic is backed up.

That framing has won over key industry factions. "We're just in the initial stages, but it's one of the most exciting and bold initiatives taken on by the FAA in decades," Airlines for America, the trade group representing major US carriers, said in a statement.

Context: controller shortage and system scrutiny

The SMART deployment is the latest step by the Trump administration to revamp air traffic control systems, which have faced sustained scrutiny after a series of deadly, high-profile aviation incidents at the beginning of the president's term. One persistent issue is the chronic shortage of properly trained air traffic controllers — a problem that predates the current administration.

Whether SMART addresses that gap remains an open question. The system's stated function is analytical — conflict prediction and routing optimization — rather than direct control, and the FAA has committed only to a 90-day evaluation in a single region before deciding on expansion.

The test now underway in Washington will determine whether an AI-driven planning layer can be layered onto a controller workforce under strain — and whether the FAA's crawl-walk-run approach, pressed on it by the airlines it regulates, can deliver measurable reductions in delays without disrupting schedules. The 90-day results, and Bedford's expansion decision that follows, will set the pace for one of the most consequential technology programs the agency has launched in decades.