RTX's Collins Aerospace launches Tower MicroELITE surveillance solution

Tower MicroELITE’s high-fidelity display gives controllers a clear, real-time view of nearby aircraft, helping contract and non-federal towers manage rising traffic with confidence.

Air traffic control towers across secondary, regional, and municipal airports face mounting operational complexities as flight movements increase rapidly outside major metropolitan hubs. Historically, federal contract towers, general aviation reliever fields, and private airfield facilities have operated without the benefit of certified, high-fidelity terminal radar display equipment due to the prohibitive capital costs and physical footprint associated with enterprise automation architectures. Without direct radar display feeds, controllers at these facilities must rely heavily on visual acquisition and manual flight progress strips to sequence arrivals, manage departures, and maintain spatial separation. As cargo logistics hubs, corporate flight departments, and regional passenger carriers shift operations toward non-primary airfields, air traffic management demands compact, certified surveillance visualization tools that bridge the technological divide between small tower cabs and primary terminal radar approach control facilities.

Radar Automation Derived from Federal Terminal Standards
To deliver certified situational awareness to non-federal and contract facilities, Collins Aerospace, a business unit of RTX, introduced its Tower MicroELITE surveillance display solution. San Bernardino International Airport in Southern California became the initial operational site to deploy the digital display system, providing tower controllers with integrated surveillance tracking to manage a rapid surge in commercial, cargo, and general aviation operations.

Tower MicroELITE is architecturally derived from Collins Aerospace's Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System, the core automation platform deployed by the Federal Aviation Administration across Terminal Radar Approach Control facilities and major air traffic control towers nationwide. Built upon commercial off-the-shelf hardware, the system packages terminal-class processing into a compact, scalable display form factor. The design enables rapid deployment across diverse airfield layouts, including regional airfields, general aviation relievers, corporate business jet terminals, and municipal heliports, delivering certified radar presentation without requiring custom server rooms or extensive facility retrofits.

Airborne Position Reference Certification and Tower Scalability
The Federal Aviation Administration granted Tower MicroELITE formal System Design Approval as an Airborne Position Reference Tool. This regulatory designation authorizes the system for immediate deployment across eligible facilities participating in the FAA Contract Tower program, as well as privately managed air traffic control installations.

By presenting incoming target tracks within an interface identical to standard terminal automation screens, the solution allows controllers to monitor aircraft ground speed, altitude, identity, and projected flight paths with minimal retraining. Nicole White, Vice President and General Manager of Connected Aviation at Collins Aerospace, stated that expanding flight volumes require tower personnel to maintain an unambiguous picture of their immediate airspace. She emphasized that the platform couples regulatory compliance with modular scalability, allowing controllers to sequence converging arrivals and departures with greater operational certainty.

Additional Context
This section details technical specifications and competitive benchmarking not included in the original product announcement.

Air traffic management in the United States divides tower facilities between FAA-staffed towers and approximately two hundred sixty facilities administered under the FAA Contract Tower program. Under FAA Order 7110.65, air traffic controllers operating without an approved radar display must establish procedural separation based on pilot position reports and direct visual observation out the cab windows. Deploying an approved Airborne Position Reference Tool allows tower personnel to use certified electronic targets derived from secondary surveillance radar and Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) In and Out feeds to verify aircraft location, validate traffic sequencing, and reduce verbal radio read-backs, although full radar separation minimums still require subsequent terminal automation certifications. In its system architecture, Tower MicroELITE ingests ADS-B, Wide Area Multilateration, and terminal radar data over secure IP networks, driving high-resolution touch-compatible workstations with low power consumption and high mean time between failures.

Within the small-tower and digital air traffic management market, Collins Aerospace's Tower MicroELITE competes directly with situational awareness and digital tower displays developed by Saab (such as the Integrated Digital Tower and Aerobahn platform), Indra, Leidos, and Searidge Technologies. While competitors often offer digital remote-tower camera arrays or custom glass-cockpit ground surveillance modules that require proprietary sensor suites and multi-million-dollar capital investments, Collins leverages its established footprint as the prime contractor for the FAA STARS automation system. By repurposing the existing human-machine interface, display protocols, and track-rendering symbology of STARS, the system minimizes training friction for FAA-credentialed controllers and establishes a scalable foundation for future safety alerts, including automated terminal conflict detection capabilities planned for subsequent software updates.

Edited by Romila DSilva, Induportals Editor, with AI assistance.