The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Spectrum Engineering is responsible for ensuring that the radio frequency spectrum needs of both military and civil aviation are met.

The aviation community is one of the major users of the radio frequency spectrum in the United States. In fact, the top three spectrum users in the Federal Government are the FAA, the Air Force, and the Navy — the FAA presently has over 30,137 frequency assignments. Virtually all of the FAA's navigation, communication, and surveillance systems are dependent on use of the radio frequency spectrum. Numerous aircraft systems, such as airborne weather radar, are also users of the spectrum.