Continuing our new series of coverage from Airspace World 2026.
The entire Global Airspace Radar team had many meetings across the four days in Lisbon, including Publisher Vincent Lambercy’s discussion with the Executive Vice President of Air Traffic at Indra Group, Victor Martinez. Victor shared Indra’s latest developments and looked back over the past year, which has seen important milestones for the company.
Ramping up in the US
Indra is one of the two suppliers selected by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to provide 600 new radars in three years (currently around 2/3 of this figure has been awarded, whilst the rest is expected to be awarded later in 2026). The timeframe and the numbers are very ambitious, as previously discussed at Airspace Asia-Pacific with Enrique Castillo. Victor confirmed that the plan put in place by Indra is working: new production capabilities in Spain and in Kansas have tripled and the first operational deployment has been completed.
Delivering a radar renewal programme at such a scale is a challenge and not only for the provider. Victor confirmed that both organisations are working together hand in glove: “I’m seeing the FAA really running the programme. Of course, in a project like this, you also have to make adjustments here and there. The FAA is with us on the journey. They have the plan and the intent to meet these aggressive time scales, and they are doing their part”.
A partnership for the future
Indra, NATS and Searidge announced a new joint venture focusing on digital towers. NATS brings operational expertise and Indra adds global presence and workforce. Victor expects a shift in the tower market, focusing on value to customers. “Before, the concept of digital towers was more from the perspective of the remote towers, which is only one of the use cases. This will still be an important area. But now we believe that the use case of digital augmentation of a complex tower, at a complex airport, is going to fundamentally change the operations in large international airports with runways that have a lot of movements, both for the airside and platform control.”
Combining Indra digital tower installations in Saudi Arabia, Budapest and Vancouver to name but a few, and Searidge’s experience in complex airports like Hong Kong and London Heathrow make the joint venture a unique partnership. The combination of insights, experience and expertise has the potential to yield interesting results in the future.
Introducing Linkia
One of the novelties presented by Indra at Airspace World is the Linkia platform. In a nutshell, Linkia is an ATM-certified integration platform that enables the integration of multiple services, while hiding the underlying complexity of the infrastructure layer. Linkia is Indra’s response to the new software delivery model (SDM) that SESAR advocates. In Victor’s own words: “We don’t want that IKEA moment where you open the box and you see all those pieces and say, okay, how am I going to put all of this together? We want to provide to the customers the advantages of modularity, but also ensure they have tools to avoid integration complexity if they chose to do so. Linkia isolates the complexity of what is below and what infrastructure you have chosen.”
The key to multiple successes
Indra announced multiple new contracts at Airspace World: voice communication systems for Skyguide, a tower integration system for PANSA and a drone management system for NAV CANADA. When I asked Victor what stands behind those successes and how the company will manage many projects simultaneously, he pointed to two factors: the team and the customers’ trust.
Those two factors do not come by chance: “All of those projects are linked to areas that were highlighted in our strategic plan that we started working on quite a long time ago. So we have been preparing our teams, we have been increasing capacity.”
Indra has built strong relationships with their customers over the years and they are proud and grateful to be their technology partner. “Our role is to be able to give our customers tools to manage the traffic. Planes need to fly. We need to increase capacity while maintaining the levels of safety, and we are working with our customers to be able to help them with our technology humbly. And to work with them to deliver the next generation of systems. That’s our role in the market.”
