The FAA will soon launch SMART — Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes, and Trajectories — an $875M AI software program developed by Air Space Intelligence to help address the agency’s air traffic controller shortage. A one-page readout describes SMART as a cloud-based platform that enhances existing FAA air traffic management systems, using AI to assess airline schedules, weather, airport capacity, airspace conditions, and operational constraints to predict traffic flows and identify potential conflicts before they occur. The Wall Street Journal reports that the contract runs 12 years and that the software will first roll out in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area before expanding to other regions.

Earlier this year, the FAA announced a “bold, new” hiring plan it said would erase the longstanding staffing shortage, and the government is separately working on a broader modernization of aging air traffic systems. The SMART deployment is one concrete piece of that larger effort.