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

It doesn't look precise enough

[nyekulturniy]

10 cm errors are still significant enough to cause an aircraft to be damaged landing, or to cause damage landing. It sounds like the news article is actually a press release/prospectus in disguise.

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[metlin]

Yeah, but it's gotta start somewhere.

Only a matter of time before the margin is improved.

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[Junta]

Is it though? 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? You can bet pilots don't know within 10cm where there plane is relative to anything outside the plane. If any operation of such a large vehicle operated by a person required better than 10cm of precision to avoid damage, there would be serious problems..

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[hazee]

Even a single seater fighter is a big beast, compared to say, a family car. If you've ever seen a Harrier thump down on the deck of a carrier, you'll see that the suspension gives considerably more than 10cm as the plane makes contact. I think 10cm is more than good enough - certainly better than any current pilot, and they seem to do OK.

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[thhamm]

ever flown an airplane by yourself? it would be nearly impossible if 10cm would make a difference.

for autoland itself - except for the higher precision in this case - nothing new. google up what CAT IIIc ILS approach means.

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.

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[uberdave]

When landing a harrier on a pitching, rolling aircraft carrier deck, 10cm doesn't make any difference at all. In fact, it's pretty much a precision touchdown.

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[YrWrstNtmr]

Very true. 10cm is easily enough precision for an aircraft.

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[David Horn]

When landing a commercial airliner, the rader altimeter only gives the height of the wheels above the ground to the last 5 feet. The rest of it is down to the pilot's gut instinct and flying ability.

Believe me, I've been on planes where they've just dropped the last few feet, and the autoland system on an Airbus can apparently never make a smooth landing.

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[Afrosheen]

Yeah I was about to mention the necessary strength of a Harrier myself.

Most aircraft are designed to land on a nice smooth stretch of tarmac. Harriers and the future JSF *can* but don't require it. Harriers were originally designed with 'no tarmac' in mind, you can land one in a low brush pile if you must.

Just consider the fact that most landings occur with the airplane coming in at a nice smooth angle and touching down. The Harriers can land vertically, and basically drop themselves on their landing gear, so the gear and the support structure is that much stronger to handle the stress.

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[M1FCJ]

can I have my mirror back, please?

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[M1FCJ]

Harrier was designed for operating in the Soviet-infested front lines of Europe. The idea was hiding in forests or crowded places without a long runway getting bombed all the time.

Fortunately it was never used for the arena it was designed for. Phew.

On the other hand, it was designed with the sole aim of VTOL and it is still the only fixed-wing aircraft which can do this comfortably. V-22's are still not operational, are they? I'm not sure about JSF's VTOL capabilities either.

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[SuprCzr]

I do know where my car is within 10cm... and i think that more drivers should know this, itd probably help avoid may accidents where people think they're close enough. Too many people have backed into my car parallel parking.

and I agree that a 10cm margin when compared to the dimensions of an aircraft ends up being a rather small percentage compared to the length of an automobile, a small percentage that is probably good enough to work.

But, if one soldier that dies because of that small margin there'll be hell to pay with the american public.

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[jskiff]

When landing a commercial airliner, the rader altimeter only gives the height of the wheels above the ground to the last 5 feet.

Perhaps this was true in the past, but modern airliners (and even not so modern airliners) give accurate radio altimeter readings down to the last foot. This is required for autolands.

Point of note: if you ever look on the flight deck of an airliner, you'll see that the radio altimeter actually will read in the negative on the ground. For instance, a 767 will read -6. This is so when the plane is in landing configuration with the nose a few degrees up, the radio altimeter will read 0 when the main gear touchdown.

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[Afrosheen]

JSF's VTOL is much improved over the Harrier. My uncle actually works for Lockheed Martin and emailed me a video of the VTOL system in testing. (Yes it was cleared, he's very anal about security.)

The Harrier simply rotates jet exhaust ports downwards to provide it with lift. This is somewhat inefficient. The JSF rotates _the entire engine assembly_ so the full exhaust thrust is aimed straight down. It's kinda revolutionary and works better than the Harrier. It may start some brush fires but oh well. I imagine the Harrier did too.

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[Clockwork Apple]

I was under the impression that the "STOVL" JSF variant, actually engaged a geared lifting fan forward to the CG, in conjunction with simply vectoring the exaust port of the turbine aft.

The engine it self stayed fixed.

Has this changed radically in the last few years?

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[StarsAreAlsoFire]

Uhm... no.

'Normal' aircraft landing systems are designed to allow you to hit the ground as if dropped (literally) from 3 meters.

Aicraft carriors its 6 meters. Or maybe it was 9m. Anyway. 10 cm is fricking nothing at all.

I am curious what you think could happen if the system screws up by less than 4".

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[StarsAreAlsoFire]

You have been watching 'Airplane' again, haven't you?

Least-wise, I think that is the only place Ive ever seen side mirrors mounted on a fighter ;~) Could have been someother movie.

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[ishepherd]

No real knowledge on this subject, but I remember seeing this - has a cool movie, in WMV format only I think.

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[StarsAreAlsoFire]

I was going to say something similar; however I did know that the engine does pivot. It does so to provide additional lift and vector control (otherwise the plane woudl be 'balancing on a point' so to speak).

The vast majority of the lift comes from the lifting fan; nice, cold gas. The engine thrust-gas is routed through ductwork and the main nozzle pivots to provide stability and direction control; each wing has a small nozzle for this purpose.

If I recall correctly, the HOT gasses are not used, or are mixed well enough with cold air that fire is not a concern. (this and the lifting fan are points for the grandparent ;~) )

But then, Boeing said that THEIR version wouldn't choke to death on its own exhaust.... WHUPS! Guess they were wrong!

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[Afrosheen]

Seems like I was missing a few details. While I was waiting for the word from my uncle, I did a little googling. Looks like in addition to the engine pivot there's a serious shaft-driven fan that blows lots of cold air out of the rear exhaust port (which pivots) as well as 2 ports beneath each wing for roll control. Fascinating system.

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[norton_I]

I believe, but am not sure, that the engine on the JSF stays fixed. Regardless, it definitely uses a lifting fan to provide the bulk of the lift. The Boeing design candidate used a rotating engine assembly which was simpler to design but gave considerably inferior performance.

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[iq in binary]

I could tell you within 5cm how close my car is to the one in front of me, on the left and right when I'm driving down the highway. I can tell you within 2 cm where my car is located in location to the one in front and behind when I'm parallel parking.

If I couldn't, I honestly wouldn't hop behind the wheel.

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[YrWrstNtmr]

Actually, many fighters do have mirrors. But they are on the inside of the canopy...:)

Note: The first linked pic looks like an A-10 rather than what it is labeled as (F-15)

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[Decker-Mage]

More than accurate enough. All aircraft in naval service are structurally reinforced, extremely in many cases. Over a third of my service in the US Navy was in the aviation side of the house and the specs on those birds is more than enough to handle 10 cm (4"). Still, it's interesting that this isn't quite a good as the AN/SPN-32 ACLS manages for the US Navy, before we de-tune it. [Otherwise it keeps planting the aircraft on exactly the same spot each time and wears a hole in the deck, I kid you not!].

I am also more than a bit concerned that the testing seems only to have been under ideal conditions to date. Landing a helicopter or VSTOL in adverse weather conditions is not fun and I have no idea how a computer would handle a corkscrewing ship in the worst conditions. Been there, done that, cleaned up the wreakage.

Last point, pilots will only use these systems if you point a gun at their head. It's harder than heck to get the SPN-32 tested. They hate ACLS. Pilots are worse control-freaks than geeks ;-).

ex-ET1, USN

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[Moofie]

Nope. You're exactly right.

The articulating nozzle is a really big moving feature, but it is just the nozzle, not the engine. There's also a lift fan mounted behind the cockpit, which is driven by a shaft off the engine.

Re:It doesn't look precise enough

[Guppy06]

"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"

If landing on an aircraft carrier were as easy as driving a car, we'd all be doing it.

"If any operation of such a large vehicle operated by a person required better than 10cm of precision to avoid damage, there would be serious problems.."

Why do you think it takes so much time and money to train them to do it?

Simpsons quote

[smcavoy]

yeah, yeah but it's close enough
"God Bless the idiot proof air force" -- Side show Bob

Land on a Carrier?

[Mensa Babe]

The correct headline sould be: Push a button and land on a carrier as long as there is no software "glitch" or any single thing unforseen by the programmers, because unlike a real pilot, the computer will not quickly learn new skills to survive. Or are they going to make the system perfect, just like ABS, or ATMs, or PC software? Good luck.

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:Land on a Carrier?

[Adult film producer]

oh please, don't be so dramatic. Landing on a carrier is not really that big of a deal, once you've had a little training the simulator, and buddied with another pilot in for the real thing, it's pretty easy. Consider the size of the jet being flown compared to the size of the aircraft carrier. It's small.. real small, hell the deck probably has 40 or 50 sitting on top, that should give you some perspective on the room available for landing. Again not a big deal.

Re:Land on a Carrier?

[coolcold]

on the other hand, real pilot do make mistakes while computer software (with good hardware and reasonable conditions) don't. You can always test your software before deployment.

Re:Land on a Carrier?

[Spodlink05]

The correct headline sould be: Push a button and land on a carrier as long as there is no software "glitch" or any single thing unforseen by the programmers, because unlike a real pilot, the computer will not quickly learn new skills to survive. Or are they going to make the system perfect, just like ABS, or ATMs, or PC software? Good luck.

Funny how the EuroFighter, JSF and numerous other unstable-by-design aircraft would fall out of the sky if it wasn't for the computers constantly making tiny adjustments and generally flying the plane in the first place.

Re:Land on a Carrier?

[ScottyUK]

hell the deck probably has 40 or 50 sitting on top

You've obviously never seen HMS Invincible then, http://www.royal-navy.mod.uk/static/pages/1469.htm l/, if you think it can hold 40/50 aircraft on the top deck. Harriers do not land on UK carriers "in-flight" as US aircraft would on a massive vessel (Nimitz, perhaps?); they require to hover above the deck and lower down onto the ship. Hovering alone is hard enough and combined with pitching/heaving seas and a deck that is constantly in motion, landing there is a big deal...but I'm sure you could do it better.

Re:Land on a Carrier?

[ScottyUK]

Sorry, piss poor link in my post:
http://www.royal-navy.mod.uk/static/pages/1469.htm l

Re:Land on a Carrier?

[uberdave]

Just a guess, but when landing, you are pointing the plane at a target (Instrument Landing System). The aircraft can compute how to stay on the glide path. When taking off, there is no such system, and consequently, no way to know if you are on the right track.

Of course, this is just a guess. I am not a pilot. P.S. Anybody know any good flight sim programs for linux? With helicopters?

Re:Land on a Carrier?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Along with ILS/autopilot on most airliners."

Uhm. No.

Most larger jets (e.g. airlines) use Autoland. You hit a button, and the damn thing lands itself--but that really defeats the purpose (and fun) of flying; it comes in useful when your visibility drops down to nothing, though. ILS doesn't do anything automatic. Infact, you have to have a visible runway (decision height, and whatnot) to shoot an ILS approach. Also, autopilot only works in the air--it doesn't land the aircraft. Sure, after the aircraft is in a climb, it can be kicked on and set for something like a 2,000ft/min climb and then fly itself from there on (but the pilot still has to enter all the headings--and know when to level off--or it's worthless).

Anywho, contrary to ILS approaches, with Autoland you can have zero visibility and still shoot the approach. The aircraft flies itself and can even taxi the aircraft back to the gate if the visibility on the ground is still zero. As the matter of fact, autoland on some Boeings is quite cool. In cases of high wind, the aircraft will actuall turn itself into the wind, but the landing gear will rotate to remain aligned with the runway. Basically, the airfraft lands, and then the hull starts to slowly rotate to align back with the landing gear.

However, don't be fooled into thinking Autoland is perfect. As the matter of fact, the Autoland in the Airbus A(something) is a bastard child to try and deal with. So, if a pilot hits wind shear on, say, short final and attempts a full-power climb out, the aircraft still thinks it's trying to land, and overrides the pilot. Maybe they fixed it since last time I checked (or since last time someone died), but it's not something I'd ever want to fly, personally.

"If it ain't Boeing, I'm not going."

*ducks*

Re:Land on a Carrier?

[Afrosheen]

Battlefield Vietnam played through Cedega?

All I know is, the helicopters are hard to fly, and the jets are damn near impossible.

Re:Land on a Carrier?

[Charcharodon]

Funny how the EuroFighter, JSF and numerous other unstable-by-design aircraft would fall out of the sky if it wasn't for the computers constantly making tiny adjustments and generally flying the plane in the first place.

That's a misconception. They always talk about how hard/impossible a plane would be to fly if it weren't for the computers.

Unstable in the aviation world does not have the same meaning that non-pilot types give it.

Stable means the design causes the plane to try to return to it's orginal attitude after disturbed by: wind, an input by the pilot etc. So if I bank the plane to turn, when I let go of the controls eventually the plane will level itself...most of the time. In certain situations even stable designs become unstable and will not self recover. For training, safety sake, and to reduce pilot load this design makes sense, but high performance this design will never be.

An unstable design if put in the same situation, banking the wings and then letting go of the controls will result in the plan most likely to either hold that position or to continue to steepen the turn. During manuevering this is very desireable, but eventually without input by the pilot the plane will get itself into trouble.

Now jump in with electronic flight control systems. They can duplicate the same built in stability a Cesna has and make the plane easy and docile to fly, or I can press a button and put it into a high performance moden and be highly manueverable. I can have multiple modes each being usefull in certain situations. For example I can have it dampen airframe oscilations that can lower the life of my airframe, and those same sensors can be used to detect and put corrections in for wind to help me hold a course. I may simply want it to hold the plane in what ever attitude I put it in so it flies more like a plane in a video game, (even unstable designs will have some attitudes it will try to correct itself in so that can hinder you) Add in an autopilot and a GPS and now I can simply give the plane waypoints to fly. Throw in a few more tricks and I can get the plane to take off, fly to a destination, and land in weather most pilots would say forget it. I can turn off nearly all the systems and fly the plane manually without much difficulty, but my life would be a bit more difficult.

This is my take on flying: flying a plane is alot like driving fast in light traffic in a manual car, in bad weather, listening to 4-5 passengers talking, talking on 2 cell phones to different people every 10 minutes, looking at a map, and of course trying to keep the car on the road, a road that you may or or may not even be able to see, and finally a road that can be driven in any direction at multiple altitudes.

If you were a military pilot add in freaks shooting at you while doing all these things.

These systems definitely improve the pilots control and precision and give him a chance to set down a few of the items they are juggling to be able to rest or concentrate on fewer things. This expands the envelope a pilot can opperate in.

I'll give you one point though. You are correct in most modern aircraft if you were to suddenly take away all of the electronic flight systems the plane would fall out of the sky, but to get all those systems to shut down at once (most primary systems are at least triple redundant)usually means something so drastic had happened that the plane would have come down whether or not those systems were functioning.

Re:Land on a Carrier?

[homer_ca]

Human skills are overrated. The response time of human reflexes is about 0.2s. That's just reflex. If a decision needs to be made, it'll be longer. There's no time to learn new skills on final approach. Whether you're on manual or autopilot, the only thing to do is have pre-planned procedures for every emergency, whether it's have enough reserve engine power to abort or knowing when to eject. For anything as critical as an autoland system, you'd have two or three flight computers each checking the outputs of the others.

Re:Land on a Carrier?

[tmortn]

I think the latest verstion of x-plane can be run in Linux. www.x-plane.com I think

Re:Land on a Carrier?

[VendettaMF]

Pilots handle take-offs and landings for the same "if something unexpected happens" reasons.

If something unexpected happens at 50 feet above ground (regardless of whether its ascent or descent) there's not a lot of time to establish control of the aircraft and "make it right" again.

Personally I'd rather take a microlight under my own control than an auto-landed flight. Trusting corporate commercial pilots is bad enough. Not that I think they're safer or anything. I'd just prefer to be kicking the rudder bar all the way down than sitting back trying to ignore the screaming and wailing, regretting a last meal of airline gloop and wishing I could have died in a more comfortable seat...

Re:Land on a Carrier?

[dunc78]

So when not under autoland control is the rudder tied to the front wheel? Or are they tied together on large aircraft? I have only flown a Cessna 172.

Re:Land on a Carrier?

[cathouse]

Don't know if the count is any higher now, but last I was aware of TWO Airbus ploanes had engaged in CONTROLLED FLIGHT INTO TERAIN, one of them while the flight crew franticly attempted to regain control from the computer.

Re:Land on a Carrier?

[Moofie]

Flight control software is held to a slightly higher standard than Windows.

Are there problems? Sure, occasionally. There are always problems in systems that allow people to do complicated things. I can list half a dozen aircraft off the top of my head that wouldn't be able to keep the pointy end into the wind if it weren't for flight control computers, and by and large they work just fine.

This technology is an extension of that technology, not of your PC.

Re:Land on a Carrier?

[ScottyUK]

You still dont distinguish between US and UK aircraft carriers. UK aircraft carriers are miniscule compared to US carriers, and Harriers are uselessly simulated within FS. If you think you could still manage this, go have a word with John Farley - he'll set you straight.
If you had done any real flying, you would know MS Flight Simulator is useless for almost everything, apart from IFR training "on-instruments". FS doesn't even support motion simulation without third party additions and expensive hardware which I doubt you have.
Nothing more needs to be said on the subject so I suppose I'll stop feeding you 8-)

Re:Land on a Carrier?

[Moofie]

The rudder and the front wheel are not connected on larger aircraft. Usually there's a little wheel or lever, rather than the rudder pedals.

Re:Land on a Carrier?

[NateTech]

Most large aircraft have a tiller, or small wheel that handles nose-wheel steering.

Some aircraft have dual-controls for both pilots, and a few only have a tiller on the Captain's side, requiring the Captain to deal with all ground steering even if the First Officer made the landing.

It also adds a checklist item, if the Captain is incapacitated for some reason, the FO has to get the Captain out of his seat and moved to a safe place so he can switch seats with him/her.

Re:Land on a Carrier?

[bluGill]

I used to work with a guy who did some layout work for airplane systems. Everything was triple redundant, and only one system was required to operate to work. Normal triple redundant means one can fail, this was two can fail - that way two systems can overpower one system that fails and tries to do the wrong thing.

Some systems were either too heavy or expensive to get triple redundancy. These systems had to be placed so that the pilot was always in between them. That way the only vector that could destroy both systems in one shot killed the pilot as well and you no longer care about the plane anyway.

Re:And how...

[Sensible Clod]

It is a computer-guided system, that's how. Besides, look at all the opportunities for Windows-bashing jokes!

Technology for the 'flying car'??

[guyfromindia]

From TFA
The simplicity of the new system was aptly demonstrated when a pilot with no previous fast jet experience, safely landed a STOVL aircraft unaided - a feat unimaginable before.
That's pretty amazing! Wonder if similar technology will one day pave the way for the 'flying car'. Automatically controlling landing and takeoff for a domestic 'flying car' will go a long way in making it practically feasible...

Ye gods, I'm such a geek...

[Blondie-Wan]

So help me, when I saw the reference in the write-up about landing a JSF, I first thought "Jedi Starfighter." I must need help...

Re:Ye gods, I'm such a geek...

[M1FCJ]

I read it as JSF once, Jupiter Space Force. That's too much time spent watching Nadesico.

Re:Ye gods, I'm such a geek...

[theycallmeB]

Given the current problems the Joint Strike Fighter is having with weight and cost increases, buying a fleet of Jedi Starfighters might just be cheaper in the long run.

What the hell...it's only karma...

[Robber Baron]

"Today," you takee kamikaze airprane far up into sky, over Yankee aircraft carrier, then takee kamikaze prane...down fast! crashing on the deck, killing yourself and all aboard!
Before we have a ceremonial sake toast, are there any questions?"

"Honorable general-san!"
"Hai?"
"Are you out of your fucking mind?"

Re:What the hell...it's only karma...

[metlin]

Ouch!

The sad part is, they probably were too brainwashed to even say something like that. If they had, the war would have ended a long time ago.

Re:What the hell...it's only karma...

[hanssprudel]

If they had, the war would have ended a long time ago.

Umm, det war did end a long time ago...

Re:What the hell...it's only karma...

[metlin]

Okay, a longer time ago?

Longer than the long time ago.

Re:What the hell...it's only karma...

[mikael]

The whole population was brainwashed. That's the sad part - even after two nuked cities, they still wanted to keep the war going, all to please the Emperor.

Re:What the hell...it's only karma...

[AHumbleOpinion]

The whole population was brainwashed. That's the sad part - even after two nuked cities, they still wanted to keep the war going, all to please the Emperor.

Well they did believe the emporer was a living god, a direct descendant of the sun god or something like that. It's a little easier when you bring religion into the mix, but not strictly required. The germans did have a few of their own ready to go but they were never really used IIRC. Political and philosophical indoctrination since childhood helped. And then there is the all purpose defending your homeland angle. Sad either way.

Re:What the hell...it's only karma...

[lachlan76]

They had already been trying to negotiate peace, but didn't want to surrender unless the Emperor's position could be secured.

If Truman had been willing to accept a conditional surrender as opposed to looking for any excuse to use the new nuclear weapons the war would have ended. As it is, he only used nukes to end the war before the USSR could spread Communism to Asia.

I hope it can cater for 'natural errors' too.

[reality-bytes]

While the article does tell of 'all weather' capabilities, the cruel sea is often outside the bounds of normally accepted 'weather'.

Its worth remembering that the decks of RN carriers are extremely confined spaces, I would hope that if the system can't cater itself for the 1 in a Million chance wave that pitches the carriers superstructure towards the landing aircraft (causing damage to both) that it will still allow the pilot to assume control and direct his broken aircraft to the best of his ability over the side before pulling the handle and praying to Martin Baker for safe delivery.

A burning aircraft on the deck / superstructure is generally thought to be a Bad Thing(tm).

Indeed, in 1982 during the Falklands campaign when the Harrier had just entered service, it was operated in some very nasty weather conditions from the RN Thru Deck Cruisers (Carriers) by nothing more than human RN Pilots and the seat of their pants.

Re:I hope it can cater for 'natural errors' too.

[jskiff]

A burning aircraft on the deck / superstructure is generally thought to be a Bad Thing(tm)

Ain't that the truth? Just try asking John McCain.

Great line recited by Frederick March

[vudufixit]

In the underrated, underappreciated film Bridges at Toko-Ri: "Where do we get such men? They leave this ship and they do their job; then they must find this speck, lost somewhere on the sea, and when they have found it they have to land on its pitching deck. Where do we get such men?"

Re:And how...

[Uber Banker]

I don't see a lot of geek content here, just American type propaganda.

Well, a British aeroplane (Harrier), a British company (Qinetic), a British ship (HMS Invincible), carried by a British news service (BBC). Damn this Americanisation. Oh... what language are these posts in, English?

Plus its pretty cool, IMHO, that a computer can do this given the huge difficulty and inability to simplify the process (wind, gravity, thrust) into simple mechanics.

Prediction: JSF will not be purchased in bulk

[Anonymous Coward]

You can already see the military placing a side bet in unmanned drones. What would you rather have? 100 drones or one F22? The dogfight is no longer a central aspect of warfare, ground-to-air missile technology is adequately cheap and effective enough to remove any threat from the air...and by cheap I mean you can fire ten missiles at a target (rest assured one will hit it) for the cost of one manned sortie.

Re:Prediction: JSF will not be purchased in bulk

[YrWrstNtmr]

I think it will be a combination. 4 drones slaved to 1 F-22 or AC-130 until they get to the target area. Then the mother ship assess the situation, and lets loose the drones at specific targets, or uses them as decoys for SAMs.

Re:Prediction: JSF will not be purchased in bulk

[YrWrstNtmr]

True, but conditions can change from when the mission is planned to arrival at the target area. What I was speaking was far more AI in the drone aircraft, rather than a pilot flying it from a trailer on the ground. And from what I've heard, flying a Predator is harder than flying a regular aircraft. No seat of the pants feel, and a narrower view on the monitor as opposed to being able to swivel your head around.

We already have fully automated 'drones', that will follow a preset route to a preset point and hit it. Cruise missiles. Next, there needs to be a system to change that route or target after launch.

Re:Prediction: JSF will not be purchased in bulk

[DJDutcher]

Actually TFA isn't talking about F22s. When I first read the head line, I thought they meant F22s as well, but they are talking about the F35.

Lockheed Martin's supersonic F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is a family of stealthy, next-generation replacement strike fighter aircraft for the US Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, the UK Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, and allied nations worldwide.

Re:Prediction: JSF will not be purchased in bulk

[jericho4.0]

I think you are largely correct about modern militaries moving towards unmanned vehicles, but wrong about GTA missiles.

It's a truism in war that defensive countermeasures will beat an attack. Flack, ECM, and interceptors sharply reduce the chances of losing a plane to a missile.

Re:Prediction: JSF will not be purchased in bulk

[Frumious Wombat]

Which is purchased depends on who is in charge; the geeks or the jocks. Remember High School? Same story: UCAVs are cheap, stealthy, effective, and flown by people with good hand-eye coordination from armchairs somewhere, while fighter planes are expensive, flamboyant, effective, and require macho fighter jocks to pilot them.

Militarily, UCAVs seem the way to go, but in practice, there's no glory, promotion, or machismo in using them. You'll have to dismantle the entire approximately 100 year old culture of the Flying Ace to get them through the Air Force in large numbers. Your best hope is turning them over to the Army and Marines, who have a ground-pounder culture, and will fight for funding for UCAVs to support their troops while choking off the funding for junior birdmen over in the air force.

Re:Prediction: JSF will not be purchased in bulk

[dustinbarbour]

Ya think? Seeming that the F/A-22 has no ability for VSTOL..

Re:Prediction: JSF will not be purchased in bulk

[LWATCDR]

Actually SAMs have proven not all that effective. Look at Iraq they had huge SAM system. It ended up being pretty usless.

Re:Prediction: JSF will not be purchased in bulk

[winwar]

"The dogfight is no longer a central aspect of warfare, ground-to-air missile technology is adequately cheap and effective enough to remove any threat from the air..."

That's funny. Really funny. Sorry but I'm afraid that this idea of no more dogfights gets mentioned every so often. Missiles can do it all. Then they build planes without guns. Then they retrofit them once they get into air to air combat. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Here's a question for you (mostly rhetorical): If you can't lock on with a missile (think stealth), how can it hit something? It's now an expensive rocket.

A basic tenet of air to air combat (or surface to air) is that you need to ID your target. The best way is visual. If you can see him, projectile weapons are very handy. That's why long range missiles are rarely used. Rather bad things happen when you shoot down friendly or civilian aircraft....

Drones are useful. At some point they may replace manned aircraft completely. But probably not in my lifetime. There are just certain missions that you want flown by manned aircraft.

Prior Art - They will get sued!

[Anonymous Coward]

One-click carrier landings are currently covered under a Jeff Bezos patent.

Canadians got it right (again)

[y2imm]

Since the 60s we've been winching down our SeaKings, that is, when they're weren't falling out of the sky on their own...

http://www.readyayeready.com/timeline/1960s/beartr ap/

Re:Canadians got it right (again)

[Spodlink05]

One helicopter crashes in Canada and suddenly every SeaKing is unsafe?

Re:Canadians got it right (again)

[Xochil]

The Sea King (aka "Sea Pig") is probably the safest maritime helo ever built.

--Mike

Re:Canadians got it right (again)

[xfmr_expert]

I remember seeing a Canadian Sea King crash in front of me at the air show in Schenectady, NY 10 or 12 years ago. There's video footage of it floating around somewhere on the internet. They were supposed to be just moving it prior to the show when they were showing off for the crowd. They lost oil pressure or something like that and were forced to autorotate. Hit the right side, main blades caught, spun around and broke in half. Not something you see every day.

Re:Canadians got it right (again)

[Xochil]

Probably not a pretty site.

I was a crewmember aboard a Sea King crash at sea on October 19, 1985 (100 or so miles off the coast of Somalia).

It wasn't a pretty sight either...although we did all survive (although they aircraft sank). Hard water impact (albeit upright), shattered tail rotor, and immediately discernable water ingress.

If the aircraft had not been an H-3 (but rather a Hooky 2 (aka SH-2), 60B (Foxtrots were not in service yet), or a 46, we all would have surely gone down to the ocean floor with our aircraft. My helmut bag (little green bag zippered bag issued to all aircrews) with wallet containing CA drivers license, Pee Wee Herman fan club card and other less essential items and my first issue of US Navy-issued search and rescue swimmer equipment is all buried with Hurricane Hunter 614 at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.

--Mike

Um...

[ctr2sprt]

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.

I'm not sure I follow how this is supposed to be harder than landing a jet on a carrier. I have no doubts whatsoever that it's a difficult process no matter what your vehicle, don't get me wrong. But with a VTOL aircraft you primarily worry about adjustments in one dimension (altitude). With a traditional aircraft you have to worry about two (forward velocity plus altitude). With a helicopter, for instance, as long as you "float" over the deck without hitting anything, you can land anywhere. With a jet, you have to hit a very small patch of deck to catch the tailhooks and arrest your forward motion.

Hmm. Now that I think about it, I may be wrong. An aircraft's altitude is controlled significantly by its forward speed. (Go faster, you go higher; go slower, you go lower.) Perhaps it is mainly a one-dimensional problem. Still, I don't see how landing a jet is markedly easier than landing a helicopter.

I guess I can summarize this post by saying, "I'm ignorant. Someone with more than a handful of hours of flight time, please enlighten me." (Yes, I have flown single-engine Cessnas, but only the aforementioned handful of hours. Takeoff but not landing, and certainly not on an aircraft carrier. My "knowledge" there is mainly from my father, who was a Navy fighter pilot in the late 1940s, so that "knowledge" doesn't even extend to jets.)

Re:Um...

[YrWrstNtmr]

With a traditional jet, you have to hit a small specific area on the deck. The ship is moving forward, possibly pitching or rolling at the same time. But the ships forward speed is a small fraction of the aircrafts forward speed.

Landing vertically, helicopter or Harrier, you have to match the forward speed of the ship (maybe 10-20 knots), compensate for pitch and roll so the deck doesn't come up and slap your landing gear off, and adjust for your own ground effect as you near the surface of the deck. Also, depending on space and where you're supposed to set down, you may be coming down not in line with the ship, but maybe trying to fly sideways at 15 knots.

It's not necessarily easier or harder, just a different set of conditions that need to be met and compensated for.

Re:Um...

[omb]

Carrier landings in heavy jets eg F14, F15 are hard
since the time of approach must be matched to the
deck motion, you dont want to meet a rising stern,
the vertical descent needs to me higher than on land to break aqua-plane and the hook should catach the three wire

It is made harder yet by the large lag between making power adjustments and them taking and by
the need to be in full takeoff power at touchdown
so you can 'bolt' a broken wire or hook

Finally there is the everpresent consideration that, if you do have to eject, you want to be at least 200 yards off track to avoid being hamburgered by the screws.

Re:Um...

[Xochil]

I can't speak for VTOL, as US aircraft carriers (CVs and CVNs) do not normally carry them. Having been helo aircrew for hundreds of shipboard landings (mostly CV, but quite a few small boy decks as well), I can say you don't just float over the deck and put her down.

On a carrier, you're directed to land on one of 5-6 circles called "spots" Spots 1-2 are generally at near the bow, 3-4 (where most HS [the type of squadron deployed on carriers] landings occur are port side aft of the angled deck, and 5-6 are near the stern.

If you miss your spot, the air boss will personally check in to whether your wings should be pulled. ; )

No question about it, it's easier to land a helo on a CV/CVN than a fixed winger. However, I took the comment about smaller ships to imply frigates, destroyers, crusiers, and the like. It is definitely not easy to land on one of those when the deck is pitching all over the place. The RAST systems in use by much of the HSL community helps, but send a non RAST-equipped helo to a small boy in high seas...and the pucker factor is high.

--Mike

The helos are always the first to take off and last to land.

Re:Um...

[YrWrstNtmr]

Carrier landings in heavy jets eg F14, F15 are hard

F-15's don't fly off carriers.

so you can 'bolt' a broken wire or hook

bolter

Re:Um...

[FireFury03]

With a helicopter, for instance, as long as you "float" over the deck without hitting anything, you can land anywhere.

I'm guessing that if the deck is going up and down by 20 feet every few seconds then "floating" over the deck without hitting it gets somewhat tricky. I know nothing of actually landing choppers in such conditions, but I understand that being lowered from a chopper onto the deck can be very dangerous, leading to broken bones or even death (large waves really do lift ships reasonable distances at quite a speed).

Re:Um...

[HardCase]

No question about it, it's easier to land a helo on a CV/CVN than a fixed winger. However, I took the comment about smaller ships to imply frigates, destroyers, crusiers, and the like. It is definitely not easy to land on one of those when the deck is pitching all over the place. The RAST systems in use by much of the HSL community helps, but send a non RAST-equipped helo to a small boy in high seas...and the pucker factor is high.

After spending five years aboard a US Navy FFG, I have a lot of respect for the helo crew. Landing on a deck that's pitching up and down over a range of five to ten feet, plus rolling a total of 30 degrees is tough enough - but right in front of the aircraft is a solid wall of metal that would cheerfully shred the rotors. Plus, the ship is moving.

When the SH-60B that we carried landed, the tail extended over the end of the flight deck. It's a big helicopter landing in a very small spot. And I've got to say that the five or six times that I flew, the landing was absolutely terrifying. And these guys were flying several missions a day whenever we were at sea.

Oh, and RAST was broken half of the time, too.

-h-

Re:Um...

[_am99_]

If you have flown (and landed) a single engine Cessna, you'd probably agree that the hardest "stick and rudder" job is a strong cross-wind landing.

Well, with a helicopter, hovering, taxing (without wheels), take off, and any other state where you are going less than say 20 knots, it IMHO much harder than a bad cross-wind.

No a, STOVL jet it no doubt even harder.

So to summarize, there are many dimensions to consider in heli, and even more in a STOVL jet:

(in a heli) The altitude one that you mention,
pitch, roll, yaw, wind direction, collective thrust, anti-torque, etc.

Re:Um...

[ozbird]

Carrier landings in heavy jets eg F14, F15 are hard

F-15's don't fly off carriers.

That's why it's hard to land them on carriers...

Re:Um...

[Tarqwak]

Video demonstration of Chinook helicopter landing on a carrier gone wrong: spa6.wmv (download link below).

Re:Um...

[nzkbuk]

From what I've seen (in news footage / documentries etc) harriers hover beside the ship, once they match the forward speed & direction) they move sideways over the deck and then down.

Re:Um...

[Kent Recal]

Nah, no big deal.
During my time in the special forces airborne division I routinely landed F14, F15 and 747 on aircraft carriers.

Re:Um...

[Dun Malg]

F-15's don't fly off carriers.

That's why it's hard to land them on carriers...

Reminds me of the story of the first carrier landing of an F-111. After what was apparently an extremely harrowing experience landing, a journalist asked the pilot "if you had a choice between landing the F-111 or any other aircraft on a carrier, which would you choose?" The pilot said "Any other aircraft". Needless to say, consideration of the F-111 as a possible fleet defense craft was dropped.

Re:Um...

[YrWrstNtmr]

Here is a ani gif of the F-111B landing and takinf off on the USS Coral Sea. The -111 was too big and heavy, and the Navy dropped it in favor of the upcoming F-14. The -111 (TFX) was supposed to be a joint service A/C. SecDef McNamara's baby.

I worked on the F-111E at RAF Upper Heyford in the late 70's.

Re:Um...

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Yeah, I loved working with those 10000m long carrier landing decks. Man, when the deck pitched down fifteen degrees, the landing zone would descend 1-2 km below the surface.

Man, it sucked when the prez tried to land that 747 on the carrier west of San Diego. Mission accomplished.

Consumer product

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who got a wife who can't navigate the car into a driveway. Having an automatic parking for women would save the grass and garage from further damage.

-1, Flamebait, but I guess you're not married.

Re:Consumer product

[jlebrech]

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/236814

Re:Consumer product

[frankmu]

yeah, your wife and my mother in law

Re:Consumer product

[UserChrisCanter4]

The Japanese version of the Toyota Prius has an option for a one-button parallel park. Of course, said feature will never be seen in the US because of liability issues.

Re:Consumer product

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

I'm, that's why it's +1, Funny :)
If i werent, it would be +1, Poor Guy.
And i i were a woman, it would be -1, not understood :)

Re:And how...

[FidelCatsro]

"The pride of the American airfoce , the brittish built harrier jump jet."
Ins't this news about a _Brtittish system , by a Brittish company , Reported by the Brittish broadcasting corperation.... I know Tony blair is a bit of a tool , but its not the 51st state yet

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."

huh?

[ms1234]

The technology could also be used on helicopters, frigates and destroyers.

When are we going to see frigates and destroyes landing on carriers?-)

Re:huh?

[kclittle]

LOL! Beat me to it. I read it the same way. What an image!

-k

Re:huh?

[david duncan scott]

Well, it's been done the other way a few times, so it seems only fair...

Re:10 cm is better than meat can do

[thhamm]

i`d bet they even could do an automated mid-air refuel with this precision.

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:My thoughts on Mil Tech

[kclittle]

MOD THIS UP! So true, so true....

Re:My thoughts on Mil Tech

[A nonymous Coward]

It is my understanding that carrier planes have had this technology since the 1960s at least, but other than try it once in a while, they do not depend on it, because it is just one more thing to go wrong; if a plane is damaged, it is better to have an experienced pilot landing than some automatic gizmo which may or may not be damaged itself, and probably hasn't been programmed to deal with a damaged plane. And the pilot won't get that experience except by doing it all the time.

Some day a computerized system will be better than a human under all weather conditions and with planes in all (recoverable) conditions. But I somehow doubt that day has arrievd yet. Give them another ten or twenty years with UAVs landing under adverse conditions and I will believe it.

Re:My thoughts on Mil Tech

[YrWrstNtmr]

...wasn't tested under extreme conditions...

No, but this was the first test. Let them work on it and let it mature for a while.

Re:My thoughts on Mil Tech

[StarsAreAlsoFire]

So what's your opinion on the collision avoidance system that was tested a few years back on (IIRC) an F/A 18?

The one that the test pilot went into a hands free vertical dive at over 400mph? To see if the computer would indeed pull away at the very last possible moment (e.g. too late for said pilot to save his own ass)?

Yeah, I recal something like a snap-roll and a better than 9.5G pull out.

Autopilots get the hell tested out of them. Not because it saves human lives (hahahahhaa.... sorry), but because planes are really expensive -- and in this case, so is whatever it is landing on.

If an M16 jams and a solder dies... well, you get get another of each, purty quick.

Yes. I'm cynical.

Re:My thoughts on Mil Tech

[jbwolfe]

Have to concur...
I cannot recall how many boxes, buttons and switches went unused in the various military aircraft I flew. There were many but one example is SRS (a collection of RF antenae on P-3C's used for plot stab) that was never used and I'm not sure anyone even knew how. This is not the case on commercial equipment.

Re:My thoughts on Mil Tech

[Planesdragon]

Autopilots get the hell tested out of them. Not because it saves human lives (hahahahhaa.... sorry), but because planes are really expensive -- and in this case, so is whatever it is landing on.

The per-pilot cost is actually in the range of the cost of their airplane, if not higher.

Compare:

1. Purchase cost of airplane
2. Maintenance cost of airplane

with

1. Pilot's salary
2. training
3. Insurance
4. housing
5. Training wash-outs
6. Recruitment
7. and
8. Personnel support

And, oddly enough, a rifleman's person-cost and equipment-cost are also about the same.

Re:My thoughts on Mil Tech

[winwar]

"The per-pilot cost is actually in the range of the cost of their airplane, if not higher."

I think you are wrong. I mean, if we are talking order of magnitude, well, ok. Aside from initial training and retention bonuses, they shouldn't cost much more than another officer.

Hmm, some quick searching:
Cheap planes cost 20 to 30 million (one figure for an F18 is 24 million, another 29 million). Costs for unsucessful candidates for AF training only run about 50k. I doubt the Navy would be much higher. Navy training was estimated at around one million in CBO testimony circa 1999.

Frankly, considering the small production runs of planes vs the high numbers of people who are qualified to be pilots, planes are more valuable purely on a cost basis. But it isn't easy to replace experience. And having too many planes and pilots is as bad as having too few. The planning has to suck.

Re:My thoughts on Mil Tech

[MemoryAid]

I have seen test reports that list, as a limitation of test, that the equipment "wasn't tested in all possible environmental conditions, only those conditions that were present during testing." Better reports would specify which conditions had been present during testing, though.

Re:My thoughts on Mil Tech

[MemoryAid]

1. Pilot's salary
2. training
3. Insurance
4. housing
5. Training wash-outs
6. Recruitment
7. and
8. Personnel support

Number 7 seems like it would be negligible....

Re:My thoughts on Mil Tech

[Planesdragon]

Frankly, considering the small production runs of planes vs the high numbers of people who are qualified to be pilots...

That's just it. There *aren't* that many people who can be a USAF or Navy fighter pilot. Oh, there are a lot of people who can fly, but the window of "I can fly the hardest plane in the planet on the most dangerous type with the highest level of success"--we're talking about the difference between a professional sports team and folk who can play the same sport for fun.

And, now that I think about it, I forgot one huge cost in the pilot: the yearly cost of fuel and weapons for their training.

My Jock

[Anonymous Coward]

As swashbuckling as fighter jocks can be (I've known a few) if an automated landing system proved near perfect there would be quite a few who would be happy to sign up for it.

Even the most self assured pilots hate landing (read: controlled crash-landing) on carriers at night in adverse conditions. Scares the crap out of them.

But there would be some resistance. As there are people who are better coders than others there are pilots who are better at landing on an aircraft carrier than others. As a matter of fact naval pilots on a carrier are constantly graded and ranked according to their landing performance. And I can't see the good ones wanting to give up control over the aircraft or wanting to give up their status as a top naval pilot.

Re:My Jock

[AHumbleOpinion]

The pilots will always be required to do some manual traps. They cannot become dependent on an automated system. They must also learn to deal with stress and fear, night carrier traps are useful there. IIRC some pilots were wired for telemetry during Vietnam and the Navy found that night carrier traps were more frightening than braving Hanoii's air defense.

Manual night carrier traps are very useful to the Navy. When they have a pilot who will repeatedly do them they know they can point at pretty much any point on a map and he will fly there, he's already done scarier stuff.

RAST

[smittyoneeach]

US Navy Spruance[1], Ticonderoga, and Perry class ships have a Recovery Assist, Securing, and Traversal system that reels in an SH60B, locks it in place on the deck, and then can pull it into the hangar, once the origami is done.
Sometimes, a good ol' fashioned electro-hydraulic system is OK.

[1]Didn't fact-check to discover if any remain in commission.

breakthrough

[moviepig.com]

...getting a hovering Harrier, helicopter, or future JSF to land on a pitching deck...

A major aid to this advance was the recent development of industrial-strength flypaper...

Re:The Button May Need Some Work

[craXORjack]

"Wouldn't Push a Button, Dock a Carrier" be better?

I would've thought that "Push Button, Accomplish Mission" was best.

Re:The Button May Need Some Work

[jlebrech]

Yeah there's already a button that does that.

What about the Bear Trap? Re:Canadians can already

[Freshly Exhumed]

Glad you mentioned it the Canadian electromechanical invention, four decades old now, that is nicknamed the "Bear Trap" and has been working just fine all that time:

http://www.readyayeready.com/timeline/1960s/beartr ap/

So the question becomes: Why reinvent what works great already?

What is old is new...

Girlfriend

[MarkRose]

What so exciting about this? If I push my girlfriend's wrong button, I land on an aircraft carrier, too!

Melodramatic?

[Mike Schiraldi]

Don't use big words if you don't know what they mean.

Re:Melodramatic?

[sane?]

Melodrama

A drama, such as a play, film, or television program, characterized by exaggerated emotions, stereotypical characters, and interpersonal conflicts.

Sounds like a pretty good description of most Hollywood films dealing with naval aviation (eg Top Gun)

Your point was?

When do we get "Push button, install democracy"?

[bazmail]

When do we get "Push button, install democracy"?

First automated V/STOL landing

[Phaid]

Despite all the skepticism being bandied about military technology on this site, automated carrier landings are not new. The first fully automated landing on an aircraft carrier took place on Aug. 12, 1957, when an F3D Skyknight was landed on USS Antietam (CVA 36) at sea off Pensacola, Fla., by the Automatic Carrier Landing System (ACLS). That's right, over 40 years ago. That system is still in wide use today, and is only now slowly being replaced by the JPALS (Joint Precision Approach and Landing System) system which uses GPS instead of the radar used by ACLS.

The QinetiQ system described in the article (which is itself a component of JPALS) is remarkable in that it automates vertical landings. I'm kind of uncertain as to why that had never been done before, though I think it has more to do with the much lower level of interest, and therefore funding, than because of any technical challenge.

Re:First automated V/STOL landing

[dreimer]

Having worked on the very ACLS mentioned, I can tell you that the technology used in the CURRENT ALCS, is very, very old. The program used to land these multi million dollar planes is loaded with paper tape. I know this, because I used to load it every day, and we had to rewind the tape by hand. And if the tape reader glitched in the middle of loading...rewind and start over...I can only hope that the new JPALS will be better.

Even still, we were able to land an F/A-18 within a 3 meter square. Enough to get the 3 wire.

Impressive - but...

[nozzo]

If only so much money and effort could be directed at improving peoples lives in the third world. What a skewed perspective we have.

Re:Impressive - but...

[jericho4.0]

What are you talking about? This technology will enable us to better export freedom to the developing world, and nothing could be better than that!

Simulink

[dspacemonkey]

Even better (for you Matlab geeks out there), is that the VAAC harrier flight law can be programmed using Simulink.

You can play around with Simulink blocks in the morning, hit Ctrl+B to compile it, load it onto the harrier and fly it in the afternoon. Fast protoyping takes on a whole new dimension...(the vertical?)

BTW, they're allowed to do this because the second pilot has a 'kill-switch' thingy and can take over with the normal controls at any time. Not that that would do him any good if it all goes tits up anywhere under 500ft AGL.

Photoshopped logo?

[KFury]

Did anyone else notice that the QinetiQ logo 'painted' on the body of the fighter appears to be just a poor photoshop job? Looks like their logo wasn't on the aircraft (or at least visible in this shot) so they decided to slap one on after the fact.

High-res photo and a zoomed close-up

Re:Land on a Carrier?...

[AHumbleOpinion]

Navigating with a map and compass can involve compelx trigonometry.

I'm going to hazard a guess that you have never done air or land navigation with a map and compass? Pilots have had circular slide-rule type calculators for navigation for quite a long time, no understanding of trig required. Land navigation doesn't require a knowledge of trig either. Hell, Boy Scout land navigation exercise aren't that different from military ones.

Makes sense for a Harrier

[Animats]

That makes sense for a Harrier. The Harrier family is one of the very few successful VTOL aircraft, with a 30+ year history. It's a unique aircraft, with four vectored thrust nozzles and a reaction jet control system for use in hover. Stabilizing the beast has always been tough. It has the highest crash rate of all US military aircraft.

The basic problem is that a Harrier has more major flight controls than the pilot has hands. There's a nozzle angle control and a throttle control, along with the usual stick and rudder pedals. VTOL operation requires coordinated operation of the nozzle and throttle controls. Both have significant lag. That's a tough control problem, worse than a helicopter.

Everything has been tried. Better pilot training. New flying approaches. Simulator training. A redesign (the Harrier II). Stability augmentation systems. Avoiding VTOL whenever possible. Harriers still crash a lot. (The Harrier has a good ejection system, so the pilots usually survive.)

One of the stability augmentation systems was the VAAC Harrier Study. This was an experimental effort to use computer control to get the three inputs that affect longitudinal stability (stick, throttle, and nozzle angle) down to two. This was supposedly successful but was not deployed.

This new thing seems to be a further step in that direction.

Re:The Button May Need Some Work

[AHumbleOpinion]

Ships dock. Aircraft land. More specifically, naval aircraft "trap" when landing on a carrier.

Awwww, shucks!

[MsWillow]

One of the things my roomie, Vikki, loves is flying her Flight Simulator helo, especially on and off small ships under way. If all it takes is a "Land this puppy *here*" system, there goes all the fun for her, and for me too because I enjoy watching her have fun, knowing that I researched and bought the hardware she's using.

Where's the sport in that? Tho, in real life, it'll likely be safer.

Oh well. That's progress.

Pilots are pretty damn good

[A nonymous Coward]

When I was on a carrier (supply clerk, ha!) in the 1970s, there was a TV camera in the yellow line of the landing strip down the angle. It seemed like half the time, the two nose wheels of an F-4 would go down opposite sides of that TV camera as I watched in my spare time on the ship's TV system. This is landing at probably well over 150 knots in a cross wind on a platform which is rolling, pitching, and changing elevation. One night every single pilot, I think 98 traps, hit the right wire.

I'd say they can get within 10cm no sweat. Navy pilots are damned good.

Sink rates

[A nonymous Coward]

Carrier planes land at, I think, 20+fps sink rate. I saw a video of an acceptance test for the F-18. They lifted it in the air sufficient to produce that sink rate, cocked it at an agle, and dropped it, untethered. It bounced quite a bit but settled down without ever hitting wing tips, tail, or nose.

Ground landing sink rates are around 2 fps, I think (lots of old memories coming up here). That's one tenth the carrier sink rate.

Also, just FYI, carrier planes run the engine up to full speed (which probably includes afterburner as necessary, but this was 30 years ago, and memory doesn't include those details) just before landing, and do not shut the engines down to idle until they are stopped cold, in order to bolter immediately without waiting for the engines to spool back up. They are tough planes.

Re:Sink rates

[A nonymous Coward]

I figure it is probably like catshots .... whatever power is necessary to do it safely. I don't think there's much lag with afterburner, there's no spinup involved, so that may be right, only kick in afterburner if you miss the wires. I do remember well how they would not shut down the engine until they were stopped dead by the arresting gear and the airdale gave them the cut signal. Then the tension on the wire hauled them back a bit, and when the momentum backed the hook clear of the wire, they raised the hook for a quick trip out of the way.

Phantoms sure whistled on landings.

Re:REAL Pilots....

[AHumbleOpinion]

It's not simply pride, pilots who repeatedly endanger aircraft merely due to pride are quickly removed from flight status. Pilots will be required to make manual landing in order to train for equipment failure. These are combat aircraft. The other Navy motivation for doing it manually is to train the pilot to function under stress and fear. Night carrier landing can be more frightening than combat. IIRC during the Vietnam war the Navy wired some pilots and determined they were more stressed during night landings than when braving Hanoii's air defenses.

Last I heard the Navy still has people who plot position every day with map compass and chronometer and who shoot the sun and stars with a sextant. Again, these are warships and they can't be dependant on satellites.

Re:The Button May Need Some Work

[uberdave]

The "Bush" buttons must have worked. He got re-elected didn't he?

the smaller the ship the harder the landing...

[Herve5]

(...) However, I took the comment about smaller ships to imply frigates, destroyers, crusiers, and the like.

Here in Europe I heard landing is harder because our ships are smaller, which means whatever the active stabilization you have, they move much more in bad weather...
Maybe that's why it's a brit company (Qinetiq) that did it first: out of necessity ;-)

Re:When do we get "Push button, install democracy"

[glesga_kiss]

When do we get "Push button, install democracy"?

You missed step three....PROFIT!! :-)

Re:Land on a Carrier?...

[BenjyD]

OK, I'll give you some lumps of silicon, metal and plastic and you give me a GPS reading.

I meant simplest in terms of technology.

Last time I checked...

[flowerp]

Last time I checked, this feature worked just fine in the game carrier command.

Nothing new to see here, move along.

I don't think this is a new idea

[alumshubby]

The USN has has an Automatic Carrier Landing System for years now, and I've seen references to a GPS-enabled Joint Precision Approach Landing System to replace it -- they've tested it by having an F/A-18 land aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt with it. Apparently the novelty here is that the British are developing a system of their own.

Re:I don't think this is a new idea

[sane?]

Its landing a hovering vertical landing aricraft on a pitching ship - a very different problem since the aircraft and the ship are both moving in 3D with roughly the same speeds.

High speed aircraft and big carriers (read not pitching as much) is very, very different.

Re:I don't think this is a new idea

[dmh20002]

Automatic carrier landings have been on US carriers since the 1950's. The current version on is the SPN-46, which is the latest in a long line of succession of SPN radar landing systems. The SPN-46 autolands Harriers (running, not hovering landing) as well as most other Navy aircraft.

There are differences in shipboard landing VTOL vs. conventional. They both have their issues but the VTOL thing is not an order of magnitude harder. One difference is that the energy level of a conventional landing is way higher than a VTOL landing because a multi-ton plane is moving at around 100 knots when it hits. So if something goes wrong its a bigger mess, tearing up more than just the plane. A VTOL mishap usually just wrecks the plane. I have worked on both VTOL and conventional autoland systems and the level of precision and the complexity of the system required is about the same.

The big problem JPALS and the system mentioned in TFA are trying to solve is getting good and reliable enough GPS data to land with (remember the ship is moving so you can't use conventional DGPS or RTK systems because you don't have a fixed reference point). Its actually a hard problem and thats what these folks are proud of. Thats why most autoland systems in use use tracking radars.

SNC did it first

[dmh20002]

Sierra Nevada Corporation designed and built the system that performed the first automatic landings of VTOL and fixed wing UAV's on small ships in the mid 1990's. The VTOL UAV was the Bombardier CL-327 and the fixed wing UAV was the IAI Pioneer. See the videos. I know because I was part of the team. The level of difficulty is exactly the same as landing a manned aircraft (maybe more because there is no pilot to take over in the event of problems). We built the 35ghz tracking radar system and designed and implemented all the autoland algorithms including the special purpose autopilot code (it has to be much higher gain than a normal autopilot) and the ship motion stabilization.
A variant of this system is autolanding UAV's all over Iraq as we speak.

Russians had automatic landing in 1988

[melted]

Except you didn't even have to press any buttons. The thing flew and landed all by itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran

Canadians have it figured out

[lommer]

The Canadian Navy has pioneered a system similar to RAST for their operations in the North Atlantic. They still fly ancient sea king helicopters on tiny frigates that pitch all over the place, but they can land in higher seas than anyone else. They lower a steel cable to the deck, where is is secured to a winch. The helicopter hovers over the landing spot, trying to get into position. A ship-based crew judges when the timing is perfect and activates the winch. It slams the helo on to the deck pretty much instantaneously. The landing is hard, but it works. The only problem they have with it is that our oldest sea kings still have vacuum tube avionics, and when they perform this manouvre the shock of landing breaks every single tube on the bird.

Re:Canadians have it figured out

[petermgreen]

is this winch down system the normal way of landing or a system reserved only for bad weather etx

Re:Canadians have it figured out

[thebigmacd]

It's not used anymore because the poor old birds don't run long enough to make it to the landing site, if they even get airborne in the first place... :D

Re:Canadians have it figured out

[lommer]

its only used when its needed in bad weather, otherwise the pilots land them normally

Re:Simulink ... So much for trade secrets...

[davidsyes]

So much for the "lots of complicated maths..." that would "remain a trade secret..."

If this can be done in Matlab or a spreadsheet, then....

Just a matter of time before one of the simulators/games does just this.

MOD PARENT UP

[dustinbarbour]

This is certainly true. There's something about sitting in a bajillion dollar, supersonic aircraft that just gets me all horny. Seriously, though.. The Air Force may be the slowest to abopt UCAVs. The generals in charge of these types of acquisitions almost certainly have fighter experience and don't wanna see that heritage go by the wayside whereas the Army would love UCAVs.

Military is finally catching up

[HermanAB]

to commercial aircraft. Commercial craft has been auto landing for 30 years.

make JSF work?

[chochos]

wow, if an aircraft carrier is needed to make Java Server Faces work, they should just ditch the damn thing.

Re:Simulink ... So much for trade secrets...

[dspacemonkey]

Well, you still don't know which Simulink blocks they are using and how they are arranged. You only know the tool they're using. That remains secret.

Re:Simulink ... So much for trade secrets...

[dspacemonkey]

...er.... I meant that what they've done with the tool remains secret.

Dammnit, must learn to use preview button.

finally

[lampajoo]

I've been staying up nights worrying about how this was going to happen. I can rest easy now.

Re:The Button May Need Some Work--Ships can dock..

[davidsyes]

If they are:

towed into a drydock
secured in a drydock

Not to be persnickety or overly didactic, but I realize that a ship's hull is moored far more often than it is docked, but I served aboard two ships which were drydocked for several months at a time.

But... see:

http://www.shipanalytics.com/MS/SHS.asp

---
http://www.naval-technology.com/contractors/fender s/dun/

See the (curly quotes) "LASER DOCKING SYSTEMS" section by scrolling down about 2/3rds of the page down...

For reference, here is the Google search I issued:

http://www.google.com/search?q=docking+mooring+shi p+naval&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=10&sa=N

http://www.google.com/search?q=docking+mooring+shi p+naval&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Re:REAL Pilots....

[Old Telco Guy]

It's not simply pride, pilots who repeatedly endanger aircraft merely due to pride are quickly removed from flight status.

This guy wasn't.

Old Naval Aviator joke...

[Nick Driver]

Sorry but somebody has to repeat this old one here...

Three of the most satisfying things in life are:
1) taking a good dump
2) having an explosive orgasm.
3) making a successful carrier landing

On a night-time carrier landing, you might get to experience all three simultaneously.

You are NOT completely informed.

[Goldenhawk]

Hate to break up the party here, but the parent post is rather misinformed.

I AM an aerospace engineer and have worked on NUMEROUS carrier-based naval jet aircraft. I have been aboard aircraft carriers watching landings and evaluting the data from those landings. I have significant experience with flight stability - in fact I have fifteen years of test and evaluation experience in the field.

With that said...

Stability is two-pronged. Yes, as the parent poster said, letting go of the stick and having things return to stable conditions is stability, but it's only one level of stability. Rather, the newest fighters (especially the F-117 stealth fighter and B-2 stealth bomber) are highly UNSTABLE airplanes. Without the computers, they simply would not fly straight - or at all. The amount of divergence depends on the design - if all the computers in the F-117 shut down, the plane would break apart in moments. It simply cannot fly without the computers constantly making tiny adjustments to correct the flight path. There may be narrow ranges of stability - but stray too far from straight-and-level flight, and things go bad very very quickly.

This is a LOT different from "let go of the stick and it starts to roll". In this case, the pilot could not maintain stability at all - it's simply too unstable to handle without computers.

In fact, instability contributes to maneuverability - if a plane is too stable, it's hard to quickly turn or pitch. But start with an unstable airplane, and you can imagine that if the computer relaxes its control slightly, it can generate very fast maneuvers.

As a matter of fact, the computers in these new planes mean that the pilot is not actually flying the plane. He is telling the plane what he'd like it to do - but the plane's computers are telling the control surfaces how to move (often several at once) to do what the pilot asked.

So "stability" is a very complex issue - and depending on WHICH planes we're talking about, it's VERY true that some planes are not flyable without computers.

Re:You are NOT completely informed.

[Charcharodon]

You obviously are an engineer (you said so), but then again so is a janitor. I will be nice though and give you credit for making it through dif eq and physics.

From where I'm sitting It's kind of obvious you don't work on flight controls, because your response sounds like it's straight out of a Popular Science article. If you were such the expert then why did you pick F117 or the B2 as an example? For one neither are used by the Navy, so your chances to have any real knowledge of either are about zero. Why didn't you pick something something Navy with the latest flight controls such as the F-18 Hornet/Super Hornet, the cancelled A-12, or the controls upgrade to the venerable F-14? I can answer that, you probably didn't work on those either. Also there is the little known fact to the lay community that being an aviation engineer doesn't automatically mean you work on anything to do with flight. Most aviation engineers typically work on everything but flight, such as LRU's, software, and the all important toilet (F18/F117 don't have them B2's do.).

Also thanks for the wonderfull insight

So "stability" is a very complex issue - and depending on WHICH planes we're talking about, it's VERY true that some planes are not flyable without computers.

The whole "its very complex statement" is the standard indicator of someone on /. that is talking out their ass even as you did manage to be right in a limited way on how modern electronic flight controls are important to the operation of the latest high performance aircraft.

Re:The Button May Need Some Work

[craXORjack]

Yeah the red one inside the briefcase being carried by a secret service agent who is always with the president.

on the apache

[Nf1nk]

There is a little mirror in the CPG (front seat) section, its purpose is to allow the guy in the front seat to see the guy in the back seat.
I would imagine that most of the aircraft cockpit mirrors have similar functions.

Re:on the apache

[YrWrstNtmr]

Most USAF/USN fighters after the F-4 don't have back seaters. F-14, F-15E, and trainer (i.e. F-16 B & D or F-15B & D) models excepted.

Re:on the apache

[Moofie]

The F/A-18F also has a RIO.

Re:on the apache

[YrWrstNtmr]

Right. The -F is a 2 seater E, much like the F/A-18D is a 2 seater -C.

QinetiQ text photoshopped on?

[inflex]

Anyone notice that the QinetiQ text on the nose of the harrier looks (poorly) photoshopped on?

Re:Pssh, kids. Why, in my day..

[Xochil]

No, in your day you didn't do shit for your country...ever but have no problem disrespecting (by making such naive slights) such service. No doubt we shouldn't be surprised you're an Anonymous Coward. I'm sure you're probably used to leading your life that way.

10cm is easy

[leonbrooks]

Most people never take the trouble to figure out where the ends of their cars actually are. Go for a careful drive in some tall grass one day. With practice, it's not so hard.

I've avoided at least three catastrophic accidents through knowing exactly where the sides of my car (or tyres) were and routinely (daily) miss other cars by less than 5cm when parking and less than 10cm at speed. I place my tyres to within 2cm to avoid speed bumps, and routinely place my car in a gap less than 5cm wider than it in a single try when I park here at home. Admittedly, the road is not pitching and rolling at the time. Our local (Perth, WestOz) bus drivers pilot 8'6"-wide bendy-buses along 9'-wide lanes (not sure why lane and vehicle widths are imperial since practically everything else is metric). And so on. We're capable of a lot of stuff you might not think we are.

OTOH, I routinely meet drivers who have no clue, wouldn't know where the ends of their cars are to within 5m, let alone 5cm. Their response to wet weather is to travel at shopping trolley speeds (and crash anyway), and to unsealed roads is to either sink themselves to the axles (sand) or spin out and crash (gravel). When they start to lose traction on a corner, they brake! D'oh?

I'd love to see licensing rules here changed so that people were re-tested and had to re-qualify every 5 years. I'd also like to see the after-5-years and 10-years-and-on tests be considerably harder to pass than the first one, specifically to require the driver to demonstrate that after 5 (or 10) years on the road they had a clue about dimensions and basic physics and could recover lost traction. The only thing you could do which would have a bigger impact on road deaths would be to shoot drunk drivers on the second offence.

Time-restriction

[hoofie]

One of the fundamental reasons for wanting an autoland for VSTOL aircraft on a carrier is time.

The harrier can only hover for so long, otherwise the engine will overheat. When the harrier hovers before landing, water is pumped into the engine intake to cool it down. If the pilot doesn't land it within a certain timeframe, he runs the risk of an engine failure, and considering he will have zero forward motion and very little height, if the engine does die, he may not eject in time.

Now put an autoland function in, the pilot can get down faster and safer, putting less stress on the engine.