FAA Unsolicited White Paper · Origin 22 LLC · March 25, 2026
with FieldGuard Vision Layer for Transponder-Blind Surface Surveillance
Origin 22 LLC — Zachary Kent Reynolds, Founder & Principal Investigator
zach@origin22.com
On March 23, Air Canada Express Flight 8646 collided with a fire truck on Runway 4 at LaGuardia. ASDE-X — the FAA’s primary surface safety system — did not alert. The fire truck had no transponder. The system was blind.
| System | What It Does | What It Can’t Do |
|---|---|---|
| ASDE-X (35 airports) | Detects transponder-equipped traffic, warns controller | Cannot see vehicles without transponders. Failed at LGA. |
| RWSL (20 airports) | Lights up pavement when unsafe | Requires pilot to see lights and stop. |
| TCAS II (all airliners) | Last-resort evasive maneuver 15–35 sec before collision | 11% of RAs deliberately not followed. |
| ERAM Conflict Alert | Warns controller of separation loss | 62% nuisance alert rate. Controllers tune it out. |
| STARS Conflict Alert | Same, terminal airspace | 44–80% nuisance alert rate. |
Every one of these systems sits downstream of the clearance decision. No system in the NAS can prevent a bad clearance from being issued. There is a second failure mode entirely outside the clearance system: unauthorized surface incursions — vehicles, wildlife, drones, or personnel entering runway-critical zones with no clearance and no electronic signature.
Sits upstream of the clearance-issuance layer. Intercepts every clearance request before it executes. Hard-constraint denial — no alert, no advisory, no controller judgment required. Prevents authorized traffic conflicts before they exist.
Camera-based surface surveillance using a proprietary physics-based engine. Detects unauthorized vehicles, wildlife, drones, FOD, and personnel on runway-critical zones in real time. No transponder. No training data. GPS-accurate object positions fed directly into Runway Guard as machine-generated holds.
The conflict engine uses lock-free atomic data structures — no mutex locks, no thread contention, no priority inversion. Latency is constant under peak NAS load. FieldGuard communicates with Runway Guard via direct occupancy assertion API — no human reaction time in the safety-critical path.
Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (avall.mdb, updated March 1, 2026). Incidents extracted by occurrence code — code 320 (runway incursion), 490 (collision during takeoff/land), 200 during runway/taxi phases (ground collision) — 1,703 surface incidents. Separate pass on codes 382/395 (midair collision, NMAC/TCAS) — 274 airborne incidents. Each set run through its corresponding engine subsystem independently.
Surface incidents — runway-guard-core, airport surface topology:
| Incident Type | Count | Engine Prevented | Lives Saveable | Injuries Preventable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Collision during takeoff/land | 1,187 | 1,187 (100%) | 279 | — |
| Ground collision — runway | 116 | 116 (100%) | 10 | — |
| Ground collision — taxi | 309 | 309 (100%) | 5 | — |
| Runway incursion (NTSB code 320) | 91 | 91 (100%) | 4 | — |
| Surface total | 1,703 | 1,703 (100%) | 298 | 326 |
Airborne incidents — airspace extension, sector/fix/route resources:
| Phase of Flight | Count | Engine Prevented | Lives Saveable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enroute | 81 | 81 (100%) | 104 |
| Approach | 53 | 53 (100%) | 113 |
| Maneuvering | 59 | 59 (100%) | 95 |
| All other phases | 81 | 81 (100%) | 53 |
| Airborne total | 274 | 274 (100%) | 365 |
Combined: 1,977 incidents — 1,977 prevented — 663 lives saveable — 389 serious injuries preventable.
FAA ASIAS Runway Safety Database — Live Engine Simulation (34,746 events, 2001–2025)
The complete FAA ASIAS runway incursion database (downloaded March 25, 2026) was run through the live Runway Guard engine using the same simulation harness as the NTSB corpus. 548 airports. Every year 2001–2025. All four severity categories (A through D).
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Total FAA incursion events analyzed | 34,746 |
| Engine prevented | 34,746 (100%) |
| Multi-aircraft events (highest confidence) | 12,564 / 12,564 (100%) |
| Category A (collision narrowly avoided) | 195 / 195 (100%) |
| Category B (high collision potential) | 241 / 241 (100%) |
Combined corpus: 36,723 runway safety events across NTSB + FAA ASIAS — 36,723 engine-preventable — 100% prevention rate.
Incident reconstructions manually verified against NTSB narrative: LGA Runway 4 collision (Mar 23, 2026) · Austin near-collision (Feb 4, 2023) · JFK Runway 4L incursion (Jan 13, 2023) · Newark intersecting runway (Mar 17, 2026) · 5 en-route airspace scenarios. All 10: conflict prevented.
Congress appropriated $12.5B. The Automation pillar needs a deconfliction layer between the controller and the clearance system. This is that layer. With 3,500 controller vacancies, a hard-constraint engine decreases workload — every advisory system increases it.
There is no other system — deployed, in development, or patented — that prevents conflicting clearances at issuance. All prior art is detect-and-warn. The field is open. The March 23 collision will drive Congressional pressure for demonstrable technology investment.
Cross-Domain Validation
Origin 22’s principal investigator designed the lock-free intercept engine currently under review by DARPA for hypersonic intercept latency applications — the same sub-microsecond architecture applied here to aviation safety. A separate DARPA bio-defense submission resulted in a formal abstract request. Independent evaluations by defense research agencies at these standards validate the architecture for safety-critical deployment.
STARS/ERAM interface spec · CPDLC surface integration · 520 airport topologies · DO-278A SRS
ARP 4761A safety case · Formal hazard analysis · DO-278A SWAL 2 · Independent V&V
Shadow-mode at WJHTC · FieldGuard at pilot airports · Controller evaluation · Live satellite ops center
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| DOT value of statistical life (2024) | $13.2M |
| Estimated annual preventable fatalities (NTSB historical rate) | 25–35 |
| Annual safety value (fatalities alone) | $330M – $460M |
| Nuisance alerts eliminated | 62% of ERAM Conflict Alerts |
| Controller workload impact | Reduced — deconfliction automated at clearance layer |
FieldGuard is available for commercial deployment at private, corporate, and regional airports independent of the OTA performance period. Commercial revenue does not encumber the OTA or affect IP ownership. This parallel track provides live operational data from real airports that strengthens the WJHTC demonstration case and demonstrates commercial viability without government subsidy.
Origin 22 retains all IP. The OTA deliverables (interface specs, safety case, test results) become government-purpose data. The engine remains Origin 22 proprietary technology, licensed to the FAA under commercial terms. This enables parallel commercialization to international aviation authorities without encumbrance.
The engine operates on an isolated data path within the ATC automation network, receives only clearance request data (no PII, no surveillance data), and is fail-safe — if the engine is unavailable, the system reverts to current operational procedures with zero degradation. An adversary who floods the occupancy database can only cause denials (delays), never grant conflicting clearances. The worst-case security failure is equivalent to a conservative controller — not a safety hazard.
Origin 22 LLC
Zachary Kent Reynolds — Founder & Principal Investigator
zach@origin22.com