2025 Agenda

Today, the majority of aviation radar and navigation systems are digital. Radars and their subsystems are far more reliable and have inbuild fault detection systems enabling predictive maintenance remotely. These technological advancements are changing the required skillset for CNS technicians. Nowadays, the technical workforce must prioritise the tuning and optimization of the radar and navigation systems to maximise their performance rather than focus on hardware repairs on-site. Modern maintenance strategies focus on replacing faulty parts with plug and play spares, shifting the technician’s role from hands-on electronics repair to performance monitoring and system understanding. Today’s CNS technicians must go beyond verifying that equipment operates within acceptable limits. They must ensure that systems consistently perform at peak levels and do not gradually degrade over time. This requires training that equips technicians with advanced performance troubleshooting skills. Such training requirements exceed current international standards.
Developing this future-ready workforce demands close collaboration between industry and Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs). Imposing top-down solutions is no longer effective. Instead, a shared strategy is essential.
In the APAC region, additional challenges but also opportunities arise due to its vast diversity. Surveillance and navigation systems must operate under a wide range of meteorological and environmental conditions, often in remote and hard-to-reach locations. Success in this context depends on understanding the needs of different users, communicating in their languages, and adapting to local cultures. The opportunities are that this new skilled workforce can operate mostly remotely conducting preventative maintenance which not only leads to significant cost savings for the respective ANSPs but also to an overall upskilling of the workforce in the APAC region.
Digital tools like Intersoft Electronic’s SMS for real-time performance trend analysis and RASS equipment for rapid subsystem analysis and fault isolation are examples for such readily available and mature digital technology for a modern CNS maintenance strategy.