The Federal Aviation Administration will begin operating a new $875 million artificial intelligence traffic-management tool at the Washington region's three major airports on Monday, the first step in a deployment the agency expects to extend nationwide by 2028.

The system, called Strategic Management of Airspace, Routing and Trajectories, or SMART, will serve Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Washington Dulles International Airport and Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. It will analyze airline schedules, weather patterns and other potential traffic interruptions to, in the agency's words, "predict traffic flows and identify potential conflicts before they occur," and recommend alternate flight routes to avoid compound delays.

The Boston-based software company Air Space Intelligence won the development contract in June, according to the Transportation Department. A rollout beginning roughly three months after contract award is uncommonly fast, officials and experts said, and the FAA had to hold extensive conversations to allay concerns among airlines and controllers that the AI system might prove more problematic than helpful.

At the outset, SMART will operate well below its designed capability. Transportation officials say the system is built to analyze scheduling and congestion data more than a month in advance to flag when airports and airlines are vulnerable to delays. The initial deployment will offer alternatives only for same-day disruptions, such as weather, before scaling up.

The FAA will house the system at its Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Warrenton, Virginia, and disseminate its recommendations to controllers at regional towers and other facilities. Officials stress that SMART will not replace human operators and will not direct route changes — it only offers recommendations that controllers can accept or ignore.

The program arrives as Washington airspace, among the busiest in the nation, remains under scrutiny after the January 2025 midair collision between a commercial jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter that killed 67 people. The National Transportation Safety Board attributed certain failures leading up to the crash to the FAA.

It also lands amid a political fight over both AI regulation and controller staffing. President Trump and several deputies have rejected bipartisan calls to rein in the AI industry even as national debate over the technology's rapid development intensifies. Separately, the administration and the union representing air traffic controllers are disputing how many controllers the FAA must hire to close staffing shortfalls. A year ago the FAA said it needed 14,633 controllers to be fully staffed; this spring it cut that estimate by more than 2,000 positions, arguing that more efficient scheduling could offset the need for hires. As of April, the agency reported more than 11,000 fully certified controllers.

A spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association said the union "believes any new technology should complement and not replace the experience, training and professional judgment of air traffic controllers who are responsible for the safety of the National Airspace System." The union added that it had no part in SMART's design or testing.

"We're excited to launch SMART and take another major step toward improving air travel for the American people," FAA spokeswoman Hannah Walden said in a statement, calling the tool one that "will fundamentally change the way we manage our skies."

Funding pressure is building alongside the technology. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told a congressional hearing this week that the agency needs billions of dollars more to fully modernize air traffic control systems, arguing new technologies are needed to "supercharge our ability to safely grow traffic and reduce the workload and strain on our controllers." Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has criticized current systems as outdated and described the modernization programs as "a huge, massive build and upgrade."

Industry analysts question how much SMART will move the needle on delays. Robert Mann, a former airline executive now working as an aviation industry consultant, said SMART may suggest better flight plans but is unlikely to address the problems that drive most delays, which occur after a flight plan is filed.

"Whether it's on the ground or in flight or in the terminal area," Mann said, "you're up against a whole bunch of other traffic which arrives roughly the same time, and that's because they've experienced the same sort of random delays on the ground, en route, and in the arrivals area that you are."

Airlines may also resist the tool over time, he cautioned, because they plan and manage schedules well in advance and changes carry real costs. "We'll see how long that acquiescence lasts," Mann said.

For carriers serving the three Washington-area airports, the near-term operational effect will hinge on how controllers weigh SMART's same-day recommendations against existing traffic-management initiatives. The FAA's phased approach will test, in live airspace, whether predictive AI can reduce delay cascades before the agency commits to the full national build through 2028.