Surveillance and Monitoring
Surveillance and monitoring of GA operations is a challenge. Of the 5,286 public use landing facilities in the United States, only about 500 have operating control towers and most of these are located at airports with regularly scheduled commercial service. Only the busiest airports that cater exclusively to GA aircraft have operating control towers. These airports usually are geographically large and congested making surveillance for security purposes from the tower difficult. What’s more, even at the limited number of GA airports with operating control towers, most towers are not operated on a continuous basis and close during late night and early morning hours. While language in a Senate-passed amendment to the FY2006 DHS Appropriations bill (see S.Amdt. 1106 to H.R. 2360) would have required “an assessment of whether unmanned air traffic control towers provide a security or alert weakness to the security of general aviation aircraft”, the security role of staffed control towers is unclear. During operating hours, controllers remain busy performing air traffic separation and control functions, making it difficult for them to spot unusual activity or detect unauthorized aircraft usage unless suspicions are raised by unusual requests, improper phraseology, or procedural violations. Therefore, the mere presence of a operating control tower appears to provide little additional security to a GA airfield.
Smaller GA airports, most of which do not have operating control towers, are usually not attended by airport management or fixed-base operators (FBOs) on the field 24 hours a day. Depending on the frequency of traffic, an airport may be attended only during daylight hours, or sometimes during limited evening hours. Aircraft may still use many of these airports during late night and early morning hours as runway lights can be controlled from the cockpit using onboard radios. Airport access controls and surveillance during these unattended hours presents a unique challenge to airport operators. On the one hand, accessability is important to meet the needs of air commerce by allowing operations such as late night arrivals and departures for business trips and overnight cargo delivery to small communities. Furthermore, maintaining airport accessibility at night provides a critical safety function allowing pilots sufficient alternate landing sites if required to deviate for weather or mechanical reasons. Providing adequate site security for GA airports while allowing airport access for these purposes, including access for transient aircraft, presents a daunting challenge.
Full time security is a costly option for many small airports. Remote sensing and surveillance using cameras and motion sensors, for example, may offer a somewhat more cost effective alternative, but requires close coordination with local security forces and law enforcement to respond to suspected threats or security breaches. Uncertainty and high false alarm rates in detection systems can drive up costs associated with security response and can lead to complacency that may limit the effectiveness of these systems. However, these remotely monitored security systems provide an alternative to security monitoring for many airport sites where full time on-site security is cost prohibitive. At least one vendor provides tailored security packages, integrating alarms, cameras, entry and access controls, fencing, lighting, and motion and acoustic sensors.53 A key element of these types of integrated security systems are their monitoring capabilities, including remote internet-based monitoring of cameras and other intrusion detection devices, and the capability to tie into local law enforcement networks for coordinated response. However, these integrated systems can be quite costly to install, maintain, and operate. Consequently, the GA community, in coordination with the TSA, has applied a long-established method of providing security and surveillance in residential neighborhoods – the neighborhood watch concept – to GA airports throughout the United States.
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