Push a Button, Land on a Carrier

sane? writes "Putting an aircraft down on a carrier in bad weather is the stuff of melodramatic Hollywood films. Automated systems for conventional aircraft and big carriers has been done for a while, but getting a hovering Harrier, helicopter, or future JSF to land on a pitching deck of a smaller ship is a different matter. This week QinetiQ demonstrated a complete autoland - a significant step towards making the future JSF work."

Comments

Re:Land on a Carrier?

[BenjyD]

Flight controls on F-16s, F/A-18s, Airbuses and no doubt others are already computerised. Along with ILS/autopilot on most airliners. Reliable computers can be built, it's just that the cost of that reliability is too great for non-critical applications.

Military training tends to start off with the simplest methods and work up to the more modern: navigation, AFAIK, starts with dead reckoning, maps and compasses and only later introduces GPS.

Re:looked rather pleasant

[YrWrstNtmr]

The weather looked quite ideal for a flawless landing. Since the whole idea is for a craft to land in adverse weather conditions, I don't see how this means much of anything.

It's the first test of an automated landing system. Get it to work in easy conditions first, then refine the process. Or would you rather they the first test with their one and only prototype aircraft be with an aircraft critically short on fuel, trying to land on the deck of a torpedo damaged ship, in the north atlantic during a hurricane?

And how about when the automated landing system gets destroyed by say a midair collision, ground fire, etc.

How about when it isn't shot out? This is a system to reduce pilot workload at the end of a stressful flight. If its damaged, maybe then the pilot reverts back to trying to land it manually. What's the big deal? You think they'll completely remove any possibility of a backup system? Just like with fly-by-wire controls. OMFG!! What happens when the wire breaks??!!?? STOOPID IDEA!! STOOPID IDEA!!
No, then the other 2 reduntant systems take over.

They are quite far away from a system that could be deployed in everyday carrier operation, let alone a combat situation.

Yeah. Just like every other prototype system in existence. Give it time to be developed. It just might work.
"QinetiQ has achieved the world's first automatic landing of a short take-off vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft on a ship."

My thoughts on Mil Tech

[CHESTER COPPERPOT]

The ability to land an aircraft automatically onto a ship will enable pilots of JSF to conduct missions by day or night and in weather conditions that would previously have not been possible.

I've worked with the triumvirate of engineers, officers, and soldiers/airmen/sailors during trials of new military technology and I can say it'd be pretty good odds that this automatic ship landing on the STOVL aircraft wasn't tested under extreme conditions such as enemy and weather. I wonder if it was tested on high seas, massive winds or snow?

I know /. likes to think about the "oooh wow gosh!" factor of shiny technology but a lot of the time new military technology gets tested under the easiest of conditions by risk fearing engineers. It then gets pumped up by career minded military officers (who resemble business marketers) and then left for the end users in combat to deal with the bullshit. Try repost the article when this new automatic button has been tested under extreme conditions, seen numerous deployments and used by actual end users not in a sterile environment.

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[YrWrstNtmr]

When driving your car, can you confidently say you know within a margin of error of 10 cm *exactly* where your car is, 1/3rd of a foot?

When you're parking, maybe. 10cm may mean the difference between simply parking and breaking off a mirror.