President Trump is demanding that Congress fully fund a new air traffic control system after Friday’s nationwide ground stop exposed just how dangerous decades of neglect have become.

The President said America cannot rebuild this critical network in “drips and drabs.” His message is simple: give the Trump administration the resources to finish the job quickly and build the best system in the world.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says the existing $12.5 billion modernization package is already committed to radios, radar, electronic flight strips and other physical equipment. It does not pay for the new telecom architecture and airspace-management software the country still needs.

Duffy’s first update explained why the FAA ordered the extraordinary stop and how rapidly the agency isolated the telecommunications problem.

The Associated Press reports that President Trump called on Congress Sunday to approve the money needed for a complete overhaul, arguing that much of the current system is roughly 50 years old.

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The report notes that Congress approved $12.5 billion last year, but Duffy has consistently described that money as a down payment rather than the full cost of replacing an aging network. President Trump said the administration already has the knowledge and the plan; it needs Congress to move fast.

The immediate investigation is also getting more precise.

Duffy said two routers from FAA facilities in El Dorado, Arkansas, and Amarillo, Texas, are now at L3Harris headquarters for deep diagnostics. FAA, Cisco and Juniper engineers are assisting, while the FBI and federal law-enforcement partners remain involved.

A detailed briefing walked Americans through the equipment chain that triggered the emergency response.

ABC News published Duffy’s full Sunday interview, in which he said work to replace an obsolete copper line with fiber in Arkansas coincided with a router broadcasting disruptive data across the national network. A related system in Texas also began flooding the network.

Duffy said the FAA disabled the broadcast function on 69 similar routers, which resolved the immediate instability. He stressed that investigators had not reached a final root cause and would report the lab findings to the public.

Officials said there is no indication of a foreign cyberattack. The ground stop was ordered because passenger safety comes first, and more than 3,500 aircraft already in the air were landed safely.

The FAA’s recovery update showed operations returning toward normal while airlines worked through displaced aircraft and crews.

This should be a bipartisan moment. Air traffic controllers, pilots, flight attendants, airlines and passengers all depend on one network, and that network cannot be held together forever with equipment that became obsolete years ago.

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President Trump is right to demand a complete rebuild instead of another temporary patch. Congress now has a clear choice: fund the system America needs, or accept responsibility for leaving the flying public tied to technology from another era.

 

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