June 11, 2008
Tech to save fighter jocks
The increasing level of automation in avionics presents some serious problems for pilots in a battlefield environment. When a Soviet Foxbat jet fighter fell into American hands during the Cold War -- thanks to a defecting pilot -- Western engineers were salivating over getting a peek at one of the fastest and deadliest aircraft in the world.
The initial anticipation soon gave way to catcalls and Bronx cheers from the experts, who found the jet filled with yesterday's technology, from cable-and-pulley controls to vacuum tubes in the radios and radar. Their derision soon faded into silence when they realized what the Soviets had done: designed an airplane that was built to withstand the electronics-frying blast of EMP (electromagnetic pulse), the by-product of nuclear explosions.
While much of NATO's gear would be rendered inoperative by the high-voltage surges induced by the explosion of nuclear bombs, the Soviets had decided to use World War II-era components that were nearly impervious to the effects of EMP.
Sure, the Americans shielded equipment as best they could from the EMP, but questions always remained as to how well it would protect the vital gear. The fear was that America's hi-tech aircraft might drop out of the skies like Thanksgiving Turkeys if the balloon ever went up.
On the other hand, advanced electronics and computers are needed to render many of the latest designs airworthy. Designed to be inherently aerodynamically unstable, only a computer could generate the nearly-instantaneous control inputs necessary to keep these 21st century birds flying, making thousands of corrections every minute in response to both the pilot's input and the speed and attitude of the plane.
The technological wizards at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration) have taken it to the next level, producing a control unit so sophisticated that it will allow a pilot to keep a plane in the air, even after it's had a wing shot clean off.
One of the problems -- outside of the obvious -- with a significantly damaged aircraft is that pilots often over-react and add to the situation. In other words, when a plane gets nailed by something like a missile, the person at the wheel panics.
DARPA and Athena's Damage Tolerance and Autonomous Landing Solution adds a full flight automation and backup system that uses a plane's internal inertial navigation system and GPS systems to land safely by automatically adjusting to the new configuration -- a physics computation that a human is in no condition to deal with during such a crisis.
In a recent unmanned flight test, Rockwell Collins showed off the tech with a scaled-model F-18 in which nearly half a wing is blown off and then landing the plane safely. Hit the link to watch the strangely calming video.
I suspect that even an ace like Chuck Yeager would welcome this kind of help in an aerial knife fight -- provided the nukes don't fry the gizmo.
Posted by Mike Lief at June 11, 2008 10:35 PM
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