Good news from the boffins at the Office of Naval Research:
Select pilots in early 2012 will commence testing new flight control software, funded in part by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), intended to facilitate aircraft landings on Navy carrier decks with unprecedented accuracy. “The precision that we can bring to carrier landings in the future will be substantial,” said Michael Deitchman, deputy chief of naval research for naval air warfare and weapons. “The flight control algorithm has the potential to alter the next 50 years of how pilots land on carrier decks.”.A new algorithm embedded in the flight-control software augments the landing approach, the ONR says. Coupled with an experimental shipboard light system called a Bedford Array and accompanying cockpit head-up display (HUD) symbols, the software ties the movement of the pilot’s control stick directly to the aircraft’s flight path. Instead of constantly adjusting the aircraft’s trajectory indirectly through attitude changes, the pilot maneuvers the aircraft to project a dotted green line in the HUD over a target light shining in the landing area.
“The flight-control algorithm has the potential to alter the next 50 years of how pilots land on carrier decks,” Deitchman says…
The new algorithm embedded in the flight control software augments the landing approach. Coupled with an experimental shipboard light system called a Bedford Array and accompanying cockpit heads-up display symbols, the software ties the movement of the pilot’s control stick directly to the aircraft’s flight path. Instead of constantly adjusting the plane’s trajectory indirectly through attitude changes, the pilot maneuvers the aircraft to project a dotted green line in the heads-up display over a target light shining in the landing area.
“It is almost like a video game,” said James “Buddy” Denham, the senior engineer who has been leading the research and development efforts at Naval Air Systems Command. “You’re tracking a shipboard stabilized visual target with a flight path reference, and the airplane knows what it needs to do to stay there.”
Apart from opening up important new exchange opportunities for basic airwork-challenged USAF pilots, naval aircraft that can be landed more precisely can be designed with weight efficiencies that will either make them more combat capable, or alternatively leave them with reserve weight that can be used to incorporate new capabilities as they emerge in response to evolving threats. Such a technology could also have the effect of reducing life-limiting fatigue cycles on the airframe as well as flight hours dedicated to carrier landing practice, leaving more hours for aviators to sharpen their than tactical skills.
Good stuff!
Now for the bad news:
The Office of Naval Research is facing a possible brain drain in the coming decade as half its civilian scientists and engineers become eligible for retirement, jeopardizing what was a catalyst for American innovation in the 20th century and a lifeline for U.S. troops in the field.
While it’s unclear how many employees will head for the exit of the sea service’s preeminent research arm, Dr. Michael Kassner of ONR’s discovery and innovation department said he expects “a significant fraction of that 50 percent” to stop working.
The retirements could be problematic because there may be no one to replace them, he said.
As America’s standing in the science and math fields continues to wane, officials like Kassner say there will not be enough graduates in the STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and math — coming out of U.S. colleges to replace those leaving the workforce.
Res ipsa loquitur.
We can replace these folks with Chinese engineers. We’ve outsourced everything except yard care to China already anyway, so why not our military engineering work as well? What could possibly go wrong?
Hey, the “basic airwork-challenged” zoomies have 30,000-ft runways. You squids might look into that sometime.
Longest I’ve seen is about 13K. Even that much runway would be a bit difficult to put to sea. Squids are probably stuck with 7-800′ runways for landing.
Hell, Jas, we’re doing that ALREADY! See: 5 Nov art in World Net Daily “Congressman: Science ‘czar’ giving China U.S. technology.” by Bob Unruh@ http://www.wnd.com (Scroll down to heading–direct link to art is bad)
Geez, as if it weren’t bad enough that we suffered the onslaught of HUD cripples who can’t fly the ball and chevrons for beans. Add in the INS/GPS cripples who can’t DR without a navaid or a sattelite, and you have even more chumps who have over-inflated opinions of their airmanship. Add this little gem, and I wonder why we will call them aviators. Pilots seems good enough for such as these.
We’ve pretty much beat the TEM thing to death on two other threads. I’ll simply say here that ONR is right to be concerned. The Gramsciians have managed to destroy the possibility of college training for a goodly number of kids that would have stuck out the STEM mill.
How does one motivate a teenager to a STEM degree? I have one with the brains and the wherewithall to handle the intellectual rigor that a STEM degree requires, but she has none of the interest. In a STEM career, she’ll almost definitely be employed throughout her life, but wishes to be an “artist” of which has career paths that can’t guarantee the same.
Tuna – as much as I feel your pain, trying to get someone to study & practice a field of work they do not enjoy is a fruitless effort….Oldest son is a smart kid, Veteran and all but likes working in a local warehouse job…..He has paid school via VA bit enjoys his daily tasks…smart & all but nit right for the school side of life.
Sorry your budding artist is on the same track but take it from the HR professional, they have to want to do it, or they will not last.
Tuna,
Here’s something that may help.
Chemistry is full of artistry. The physical chemists use lasers in meaningful ways, or make the nuclei ring with a pulse of radio energy and listen for the echos of replies, giving sometimes vital data as a magnetic resonance image (MRI) or as chemists say — NMR. The top artists are the synthetic chemists. From many-colored inorganic compounds (using paint pigments for fun and profit), to natural products with interesting architecture, you are working on solutions to societal problems. There is the entire art of designing a reaction scheme and another art of getting your pure product from a mixture of starting materials and by-reactions.
In my lab I felt creative and an artist every day, even besides the organometallic synthetic work. One of my research group duties was to be in charge of the solvent stills. I had towers of enclosed glass cooling coils over refluxing diethyl ether and tetrahydrofuran. To get the solvents extremely dry we used silvery sodium metal with a little bit of benzophenone. A very deep purple or a deep blue still pot meant that the solvents were water free. Beautiful.
There is a great book called The Art of Organic Synthesis. It would be more fun to read after her second year in chemistry I.e. organic chemistry.
Bottom line, many chemists are two-culture artists, per C.P. Snow. It’s in the approach. The production of many anti-cancer drugs is a recondite art that is very helpful to mankind.
I could go on, but work calls.
I know plenty of starving “artists” – some really quite talented, several of whom are going to night classes at the local college in – gulp – engineering; I don’t know a single starving EE or ME – at least in this location – going to night school to become an “artist”.
I won’t say it was responsible for him starting out in EE, then graduating in Physics, but I never missed an opportunity to point out some unfortunate homeless soul and comment “Philosophy major” or “Gender studies major”.
Art and engineering often share a common background. Take a look at the cars offered by BMW, as one example, then look at the ones offered by Ferrari. Check out the Brooklyn Bridge then compare against the San Francisco Gate. For that matter, look at steam engines and then look at modern locomotives.
Part of what made me gravitate towards a degree in IE is I wanted to make things. I knew how to turn wrenches, weld, machine, and otherwise fabricate what I needed to solve a problem, but I wanted to know the numbers behind what I was making.
Engineers often say that any idiot can build a bridge but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that just barely stands. Likewise any artist can slap some clay together and build a sculpture, but I dare say it takes an engineer to make that sculpture something functional.
Truth be told, I never used my degree. I was taking a digital design course and suddenly a world of pure logic opened up. Those days of writing hydraulic flow programs in FORTRAN were replaced by knowledge of how the computers actually operated at the transistor level. That whole TCP/IP thing had just come into play, and networks were a level of production flow I’d never even conceived of. Computers were the ultimate assembly line (assembly! Get it? Geez I crack myself up) and the challenge of mating analog with digital was the frontier I wanted to explore.
There is an art to working the numbers, and there is a great deal of satisfaction to finding that most elegant of solutions. Anybody can crunch numbers and come up with a solution. An artist will come up with a solution that does more than solve the base problem.
– Max
If only the U.S. Navy was not planing to put aircraft into the carrier air wing that will make it obsolete against emerging threats.
Let’s see here…You’re a Civil Servant under the old Civil Service Retirement System. You have 30+ years in, and just turned 55. You have a choice.
Option 1: Keep working directly for the Federal Government. Get paid no more than you can make in private industry, probably less. Pay backbreaking taxes and endure one of the highest costs of living in the country. And get called lazy in the bargain.
Option 2: Retire. Collect ~60% of your salary as retirement pay. Go to work in private industry at your former full pay…or more. Quite possibly at the same job, in the same place.
Option 3: Retire, collect ~60% pay, but move somewhere a lot cheaper to live.
Is Option 1 rational?
But, but, no one is asking hte impmortant question–
How does ONR compare with the diversity goals????
Who cares if they can dramitcally improve landings on carriers? If they cannnot do it through diversity then it should not be pursued…
I think the security clearance system has ossified to ridiculous levels, and we’re shooting ourselves in the foot. In the 1940s, we took scientists right out of Nazi Germany and put them to work on radar, the Manhattan Project, Magic intercepts, etc. In the 1960s, it was possible for my dad and my uncle (immigrated during middle school, with lots of relatives stuck behind the curtain in the PRC) to get summer jobs (my uncle also worked full time for a year or so) at ONR’s labs. In the 2010s, you basically need not only to be a citizen, but all your relatives be citizens as well (the basic requirements for TS clearances) just to get your foot in the door. This at a time when, well, half the social conversations in any mathematics or engineering graduate student lounge in the country can be conducted in Mandarin.
Are the security concerns legitimate? Of course. But equally important is the ability to recruit the best people our universities produce, in large numbers, and not leave them hanging for 10-12 months while the background investigators laboriously work through the backlog. If it comes down to that, a working scientific establishment in support of national defense is more important than an airtight one. I would rather the Chinese and the Russians go on steal our technology (and let’s face it, given our track record, they do anyways) and be consistently a generation or two behind us, than that they (particularly the Chinese) take advantage of the talent our harebrained system trains, but then throws back at them, to develop technology that we don’t get, and then we have to be a generation behind.
Given the demographic issues confronting the American defense research establishment, this last is a real possibility within the next 20-25 years.
In some ways you are right. But, we have been burned by foreigners employed in Defense research and have had to take certain measures that make things more difficult.
We were able to take refugees during WW2 because we were at war with the people that ran them out. Don’t think, however, they weren’t watched. In the end, the people that burned us in WW2 were native citizens with Communist sympathies that made sure Stalin’s minions knew what we were about and got materials the Soviets could only dream about.
Just one example – several tons of heavy water was shipped to Russia through the Alaska-Siberia route. A lot of other materials needed for a nuke weapon program went to Russia that same way. Stuff that Grove was begging for.
The problem we are facing now is with China, and it is far more serious than many think it is.
WHAT THE FUTURE BEHOLDS… by Dan “Butters” Radocaj | Test Pilot/LSO VX-23
http://www.hrana.org/documents/PaddlesMonthlyAugust2011.pdf [1.6Mb]
“…The first and most important technology required is JPALS (Joint Precision Approach and Landing System). This is the replacement for the ACLS and the TACAN. It‟s a differential GPS system similar to civilian WAAS approaches. It will be capable of coupled Mode I approaches at the boat and precision approaches at the field. The data link portion will generate TACAN symbology and provide the same information to the airplane that a TACAN receiver supplies. JPALS is a Triplex system with 3 independent paths of communication with the airplane so roughly 1 in 10 million passes would be unreliable. A version of JPALS technology is what will guide UAVs. It is scheduled to IOC in FY 2016.
JPALS will also allow auto landings. But before we can get rid of FCLP and CQ requirements we have to make the Super Hornet and JSF really, really easy to land at the boat. To do this we need things like the ship stabilized velocity vector I mentioned a few months ago. [http://www.hrana.org/documents/PaddlesMonthlyJuly2011.pdf] We may also need to add another lens-type glideslope indicator. One idea is called a Bedford Array….”
And what happens when all that takes a dump when the plane is 1000 miles from the ship? Will the aviator still be able to land the plane on it?
Greetings:
Back in the mid-’70s, I went to work for Columbia University’s Nevis Laboratory where a cyclotron was being built with a good bit of Navy ONR money. When I arrived, the project was running six months behind schedule. I worked there for a little over six months and when I left, the project was 12 months behind schedule.
I’m with the guy above…”leak” the tech to the Chinese and let THEM educate the engineers, build the prototypes and buy the whole thing back at Walmart prices!….lol
My dad was a Navy pilot with 3 carrier landings and he wouldn’t believe what’s happened to this country. Why did we bother fighting WWII, just to turn it all over to former 3 world countries and let them threaten us with it?
Disgraceful.
Too late for my mate – old boss of mine flew 2 jets off his carrier, straight into the `oggin. On the second occasion it is alleged his CO asked him what he’d got to say `this time` His alleged reply (I only have his word for it) was, “I suppose `sorry` won’t really cover it, sir?”
There may not be enough graduates in the STEM fields to cover the retirements. There are probably enough STEM people around to cover the jobs, but what does that job bring to the table? In other words, why would I accept the offer?
STEM people are creative types, they like to solve problems and want to see results. These are not the people who get satisfaction from filling out forms or attending hour-long weekly meetings to share progress reports.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the money at ONR is equivalent to that of a private-sector job *and* the retirement is better. Who under 40 considers a job based upon the pension or medical benefits?
Now tell that prospective employee, “You’re going to work for the government. We built the Panama Canal 48 miles through Central America in 10 years. We then built Hoover Dam in only 5. We funded the notorious Lockheed Skunk Works which built the SR-71 Blackbird in 2 years, and we went from rockets to men on the moon in under a decade. We used to do work. Now it takes us 15 years to dig 7.5 miles in Boston. Welcome, here’s your desk. After your first year of filling in Environmental Impact forms, you’ll have your annual review. From there you will be assigned other forms to fill out as befits your aptitude, and before you retire you may reach the lofty perch of reviewing forms before they are filed. Somewhere in there a few weeks of planning something may be involved.”
It may not be an accurate stereotype, but nobody can argue we’re more bound by paperwork than work, that we’re at odds with action via regulation and covering ourselves with lawyer repellent.
So tell me, would you fill out forms for a better retirement or would you prefer to go home each day having accomplished something tangible?
If you can convince me that I am wrong, I’ll apply to ONR.
– Max
Max, you might apply for a job there just to see what’s there, but nobody with options accepts a job without a fairly detailed idea of what you might be doing (modulo clearance issues, which is another hazard).
There’s an awful lot of neat stuff going on in defense research. On the right project, filling out an impact statement or paperwork reduction act form isn’t such a hassle, if you spend the rest of your days causing, or figuring out how to cause, the right kind of environmental impacts