The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is developing and planning to field the Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS). LAAS is a Ground-Based Augmentation System (GBAS) to GPS, and is designed to serve all categories of precision approach. The purpose of this paper is to provide the latest technical and status information on the LAAS programme. The technical aspects of the LAAS specification are discussed, followed by a description of specification validation field testing and results. Institutional and programmatic aspects are then summarized along with a chronology of events leading up to the Government Industry Partnership (GIP) for the initial development and fielding of LAAS.