Enhanced Radar

What do they actually do

Enhanced Radar builds Pattern, a next‑generation ATC voice recorder and search system for airports. An on‑airport receiver captures VHF radio audio and ADS‑B data, then sends it over LTE to a cloud platform that provides fast audio search by keyword or callsign, AI transcription of pilot/controller speech, time‑aligned flight tracks, event logging (e.g., takeoffs/landings), alerts, and long‑term storage (site, features).

The product is aimed at post‑operational monitoring, investigations, and safety oversight for both towered and non‑towered fields, giving supervisors and safety teams a way to quickly find and replay communications, reconstruct timelines, and spot patterns. Enhanced Radar’s Yeager ASR model underpins the transcription workflow that makes radio traffic searchable and analyzable (site, features).

Who are their target customer(s)

• ATC supervisors and tower managers at staffed airports: Need fast, reliable ways to find and replay controller/pilot comms and flag risky events to investigate incidents and reduce controller workload; Pattern offers searchable audio, AI transcription, event logging, and alerts (features).
• Airport safety and compliance teams (incident investigators): Need tamper‑resistant, time‑aligned radio+flight records to recreate events and meet reporting requirements; Pattern stores synchronized audio and ADS‑B flight logs with unlimited history for post‑incident review (site, features).
• Small/regional airport managers (non‑towered or tower‑budget constrained): Lack staff/budget for a full tower but still need situational awareness and runway safety alerts; Enhanced Radar provides an on‑airport receiver, AI transcription, and automated event detection to deliver oversight without a staffed tower (features).
• Airline operations / dispatch teams (regional carriers): Need to quickly verify what was said on the radio for delay triage, crew debriefs, and operational decisions; Pattern ties audio to callsigns and highlights key events to speed resolution (features).
• Regulators, airport planners, and safety researchers: Lack structured, searchable ATC comms and long‑term datasets to quantify risk and evaluate interventions; Pattern’s transcripts and event data can serve as a historical, analyzable record (site).

How would they acquire their first 10, 50, and 100 customers

• First 10: Leverage founders’ aviation network to place 6–12 week pilot installs at nearby towers and small regional airports; the team handles a one‑hour on‑site install with LTE backhaul to minimize IT friction and demo searchable audio, time‑aligned tracks, and tamper‑resistant logs to convert pilots/safety officers (hardware, features).
• First 50: Publish specific incident case studies from pilots to drive paid conversions, run targeted outbound to ATC supervisors, safety teams, and regional airport managers, attend industry conferences, and recruit installers/consultants as resellers to shorten procurement (features, about).
• First 100: Launch a certified installer/reseller program and hardware‑lease option, add ops/compliance integrations and reporting templates for airline teams, and distribute anonymized safety analyses to regulators/planners to pull demand from airport groups (hardware, features).

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

In the U.S., there are 5,146 public‑use airports and approximately 406 airport control towers (142 federal ATCTs plus 264 contract ATCTs) as of FY2024 (FAA Air Traffic by the Numbers PDF). Adjacent global spend shows room for adoption: voice communication control systems (ATC voice stack) are a ~$4.26B market in 2024 and dedicated ATC recording systems are roughly ~$1.1–$1.2B globally (Grand View Research VCCS, Dataintelo ATC recording).

Bottom-up calculation:

Initial U.S. TAM: focus on ~406 towered airports plus a conservative 300 non‑towered regionals that would buy oversight/recording. At $20k–$60k ARR per site for hardware+cloud+support, that’s roughly $14M–$42M annually (706 sites × $20k–$60k). A tower‑only wedge (406 sites) at a $30k midpoint is ~$12M/year.

Assumptions:

• Price per site (ARR) of $20k–$60k for recorder+ASR+search+storage+support.
• Addressable non‑towered segment limited to ~300 regionals in early years (not all 4,000+).
• One deployment per airport (multi‑receiver sites bundle into one contract).

Who are some of their notable competitors

• Frequentis: Global ATC incumbent offering voice communication systems, legal recording/replay, and remote/digital tower solutions; often bundles recording with broader VCS/camera/radar stacks (voice/recording, remote tower).
• Eventide (NexLog): Mission‑critical ATC voice/screen/data recording with ED‑137 support, deployed in FAA towers and ANSPs; offers AI transcription/phrase spotting via Critical Insights AI for investigations and QA (ATC page, Critical Insights AI).
• Appareo (ATC Transcription): Aviation‑focused speech recognition that runs on edge devices/consumer tablets for pilots and operators; near‑real‑time ATC transcription without cloud dependency (product).
• UFA / ATTranscribe: ATC simulation specialist with a purpose‑built transcription product for incident investigation and compliance; emphasizes high accuracy on noisy VHF and workflow speed‑ups (ATTranscribe).
• Robust Analytics: Safety analytics firm with custom speech‑to‑text/NLP pipelines and terminal‑area risk monitoring, serving regulators/researchers who want transcripts converted into quantitative risk metrics (site).