The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced on Tuesday the deployment of a new radar system at Newark Liberty International Airport designed to prevent incidents on busy runways.

Newark Liberty, which handles over 450,000 aircraft operations annually and ranks among the nation's busiest airports, has long faced surface-level congestion challenges common to major metropolitan hubs. The airport's tightly packed runway and taxiway configuration in the New York metro area's complex airspace makes ground-level situational awareness especially critical.

The new system, known as the Surface Movement Radar Model 4 (SMR-4), enables air traffic controllers to track aircraft and vehicles on runways and taxiways under all weather and visibility conditions, helping to prevent runway incursions that could lead to accidental collisions. The SMR-4 represents a significant capability upgrade over the 30-year-old radar it replaces.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, speaking at the unveiling event, noted that this marks the fifth surface movement radar deployed in the United States.

"We will deploy 53 of these surface movement radars across the country at our top 44 busiest airports in the U.S.," Bedford said. He added that the radar system was manufactured in Syracuse, New York, emphasizing that onshoring production of critical infrastructure is a key component of the agency's modernization effort.

"We think of modernization not just as replacing all of this old equipment. And again, this is a 30-year-old box: we can't maintain it, they don't build it, they don't supply replacement parts for it. So when these things break, they're no longer available to us, so getting this investment is critical," he explained.

"It's not just that we're purchasing and deploying new equipment, we have brought these jobs back to the U.S. which is a key focus of the secretary and the president," Bedford said.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who also spoke at the event, highlighted the capabilities of the new surface awareness radar: "It'll give us better technology to see airplanes, to see vehicles on the ground at Newark Airport. It'll see aircraft on final approach. It is a more resilient system."

"It allows controllers on a dark night, or controllers in bad weather, if they can't see out of the tower and see what's happening on the tarmac, they can actually use this radar to see on their screens where everything is at – airplanes, vehicles – and again, it keeps the American public safer as we use American skies," Duffy said.

The deployment comes amid heightened national attention on runway safety following a string of high-profile close-call incidents at U.S. airports in recent years, including several that prompted reviews by the National Transportation Safety Board. The agency's surface awareness initiative is part of a broader air traffic control infrastructure modernization push that has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers as the FAA works to replace legacy systems dating back decades.

The Department of Transportation and FAA noted in a release that they have installed 96 new systems across the country over the past year as part of the agency's surface awareness initiative.

According to FAA data, there have been 1,102 runway incursions in the agency's fiscal year 2026 so far, down from 1,197 during the same period a year earlier. The data encompasses operational incidents, pilot deviations, vehicle or pedestrian deviations, and other forms of incursions.