The title of this Wired article about the X-47 UCAS technology demonstrator tickled my funny bone just a little bit:
(The) tailess, flying wing planform of the X-47B comes with some inherent stability and low speed flying issues that make the take off and landing from an aircraft carrier a real engineering challenge. The good news is Northrup Grumman has a lot of experience with the flying wing design, most recently with the B-2 bomber.
Landing an airplane on an aircraft carrier is considered one of the most difficult things to do in aviation. The Navy wants this experimental craft to do it autonomously — no humans involved. The X-47B will have to be able to take off and land from an aircraft carrier deck without a pilot sitting at a remote control station; that’ll set it apart from today’s drones, like the Predator. Taking off isn’t too much of an issue. Landing is where the engineers will earn their paycheck…
Where the real challenge is for automated landing systems is getting the aircraft the final few feet to the carrier deck when the weather is less than ideal. The ACLS can fly an airplane to the aircraft carrier in stormy conditions, but those final few seconds to touchdown can be a real challenge when the deck is pitching and rolling in the swells. This is what pilots say is the single biggest challenge of flying from an aircraft carrier. Developing the autonomous recovery capabilities for all weather conditions is going to be one of the biggest challenges facing the X-47B team.
Yep, landing a flying wing on the pitching, heaving deck of an aircraft carrier can be a challenge – although, for the drone at least, the distinction between night and day ought to be moot.
The funny bit is that, at least while I was an instructor at the (prestigious) Navy Fighter Weapons School, I never met a class of naval aviators who were more surly and sullen over the exigencies of landing aircraft aboard carriers at sea. To be fair, most of their objections – these were the high priests of tactical aviation, after all – had to do with the amount of jet fuel expended on field carrier landing practice rather than tactical training and the emphasis on landing grades in favor of tactical performance.
So in effect, landing the X-47 like “human top guns” really isn’t setting the motivational bar all that high.
Update: The X-47 might not be much to look at, but at least it’s not “adorable.”
“…might not be much to look at…”
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2778/4027722893_e825afd2db_b.jpg
Full size X-47b mock up on display at Edwards AFB last month. They even had “USS Ronald Reagan”, a squadron number and ‘no step’ markings painted on it.
This should make getting a slider easier at midrats… although, Follies won’t be the same.
(Scratches head) I could have sworn both Predators and Reapers are capable of unsupervised take-off & landing…
Depends on whether or not you bought the autoland capability. The Army did, the AF didn’t. Global Hawks (and BAMS) have it, too.
Personally, I think the real hard part won’t be getting back aboard the boat…THAT is within the capabilities of ACLS. Deck handling will be tricky, though.
Casey… that would be on a stable airfield. Not a dynamic carrier.
Love that little “helipanda” as Glenn Reynolds called it. “Adorable” indeed. But can it do the job?
Marianne
yeah, that helicopter is indeed adorable
) X-47 looks very cool 
)
JPALS (Joint Precision Approach and Landing System) looks to becoming the system that will land (but not taxi on deck probably) an UAV? http://acast.grc.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/icns/2002/09/Session_D2-4_Wallace.pdf
A question for those of you with more than a little knowledge in such things… after all, I’m just a former ordie…
How the he77 is this thing supposed to find said carrier to land on, if EMCON is being enforced? Wouldn’t it have to radiate SOMETHING? I mean, I understand that passive thermal could be used to “see” and land once you get close enough.
Wouldn’t you have to have some kind of datalink to know where that floating piece of American sovereignty is at after a strike? Couldn’t that wee little datalink be detected and tracked?
Isn’t this a “bad thing”?
BigDaddy, the first thing I’d ponder is narrow-band transmission. It’s a fair certainty that at any point in time the Pentagon knows the exact whereabouts of any surface ship in our Navy. It’s possible to transmit to a satellite without giving up one’s position via EMCON by focusing that radiation upwards such that very, very little emits to the side. Another option used back in the day was to pre-plot the launch and recovery locations, so the carrier steamed towards a pre-selected recovery point. It would require no radiation at all to merely be at the point of pick-up some 6 hours later.
The actual deck landing isn’t as great an engineering feat as one might first imagine. Start with an infrared heat source near the #2 wire and the guidance code for the AIM-9, then adjust the code to dampened rather than un-damped behavior (ie: get crazy on approach, as the aircraft gets closer do less flight attitude adjustment so as to not chase the deck). The real chore in the software guidance is going to be when to determine the landing is out-of-bounds and how fast can those economical little engines spool up to bolter or wave-off? Military jets tend to have fairly decent throttle response for just these sorts of situations, at the cost of efficiency and economy. If you want economy, you trade off power. Kind of like placing a 3.0L V-6 in a Kenworth truck, yeah it’ll reach 75mph but it might take the better part of the morning to get there. 100 yards off a pitching deck and the lights turn red is not the time to firewall the throttle and have to wait 30 seconds for something to happen. Note that this has some significant ramifications for the usefulness of drones since it affects their loiter time without refueling.
The second problem is one of handling on-deck. These being dinky little things weight-wise it might be possible for a motorized nose-gear tractor operated by one handler to move the bird around, but again until carrier-capable landing gear and folding wings are installed it’s impossible to know how their physical size will compare to other aircraft.
I strongly suspect we’ll see carriers in the future optimized for the deployment of such unmanned vehicles and separate carriers for the manned aircraft. Looking at the size of these things they could operate off what were once considered escort carriers. Given the slow speed of the aircraft, it would make a certain sense to use a smaller, faster carrier for them and one designed around their limitations.
– Max
You know, this is the beginning of a bad trend. first they came for the Brown Shoes, and we Black Shoes cheered….then they came and took the DC crew and gave us HALON and automated fire detectors….I’m sure the Lexonauts could write a nice screen play about all the “trades” of the sea going service would slowly be automated and one non-automated group we be left saying “and they came for me.” Maybe we could steal a name like “Rythyms II: The Final Insult”
Think: No more liberty ports, no sitting in the eyes of the ship at dawn contemplating the majesty of the view, BS sessions on the fantail, shooting stars on the bridge wing the old fashioned way….you know, those geeks think they can do away with us all…:)
xformed, sad to hear that. Unfortunately, they haven’t figured out a way to build a robot that can cuss, chew tobacco, drink like a fish, chase all the ugly women and still build and repair your pretty grey boats
the pics on Wired show a refueling probe. Howzat gonna work? Use a flying boom like air force I can see, but chasing a basket to plug in? I think that will probably be a bigger challenge than the landings. ACLS is proven. Automatic probe and drogue air refueling, not so much.
GE, pics show Autonomous Airborne Refueling Demonstration NASA Dryden Flight Research Center October 25, 2005: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/multimedia/imagegallery/AARD/index.html & http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/multimedia/imagegallery/AARD/AARD_proj_desc.html
“The idea was for the “tanker” in the study to develop an aerodynamic model for future automated aerial refueling, especially of UAVs. During the 1990s, a refueling pod was integrated on the newer F/A-18E/Fs. The Dryden AAR flights were developed to demonstrate the operational flight envelope of an older-model F/A-18 carrying the pod and how a secondary aircraft could access the free-stream hose and drogue dynamics from the first aircraft. The AARD flights examined the process of autonomous refueling, without pilot intervention.”
The question that should be asked is who has taken charge of the UAV programs in CNAF or even the unmanned programs Navy wide?
Where are the 1000 questions like what Captain Reeves posted on the chalk board in Ready 1 of the Langely?
Why aren’t we scheduling more war games and fleet exercises to test out these questions, generate answers to questions that haven’t been asked and in general figure out how to effectively use unmanned assets in our missions?
Just like we did with carrier aviation we need to walk before we can run and it would be a good time for some 0-6 or above to step up to the plate and not shake thier head “yes man” style. Asking the tough questions, getting tougher answers, and trying to explain where the promises are fall short of reality. Until we start doing that, these will just become billion dollar blunders. Or we will be shut out of the office like we were in the stealth programs.
I’ve sort of wondered how Predators can survive without complete air superiority. A Cessna with a pistol-packing co-pilot can down one of them. Yet we’ve canned the F-22 in favor of more unmanned, slow, low-capacity UAV’s.
Some day we’re going to go up against a country with aircraft. That will be an interesting day for Predator pilots.
– Max