Military
Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Air Traffic Control Radar 5.5; Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 1.75
Communication Breakdown; Distraction; Situational Awareness; Workload; Time Pressure; Confusion
ATC Issue All Types
Air Traffic Control Separated Traffic
Procedure; ATC Equipment / Nav Facility / Buildings
We are a STARS facility that runs the bulk of our approaches to NGP;a Navy base. They have our radar feed. They have STARS equipment; but not our STARS feed.  Because of this; we are forced to make manual inbound and handoff calls for every approach. This takes the radar controller's focus and attention away from the radar scope and forces him or her to make a landline communication that would be completely unnecessary if our STARS equipment talked to the Navy STARS.  This is a huge safety risk. Our facility is constantly training new controllers and new pilots; which is the Navy's mission; to train new pilots. Hear back/Read back is a huge issue here with the brand new; green; pilots and it is only exponentially compounded with the added landline communications. I have been told over and over that this is just a money issue. That is an unacceptable answer for the amount of safety that is at risk.  We are talking chump change to get these two systems to talk to each other. This needs to happen ASAP. It has been a problem for years and controllers have just had to learn to deal with it. Get the FAA STARS to talk to the NAVY STARS and then we can develop procedures and scratchpad entries to ensure a safe operation.
CRP Controller reports of the lack of a data link between his facility and NGP. Both facilities use STARS but the system does not communicate and the controller has to make manual hand offs on all inbound traffic. Controller reports this is a safety risk.