Browse Topic: Weapons systems
A joint acoustic flight test was conducted by NASA Langley Research Center and the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center, with the goal of investigating new methods for acoustic data collection. The impetus for the effort is the anticipated growth of Urban Air Mobility and Future Vertical Lift vehicles. Many of these vehicles are expected to have distributed propulsion systems that may result in unsteady vehicle state conditions even during steady flight. This work examines the acoustic measurements collected during purposefully unsteady maneuvers performed by an MD530F helicopter. A snapshot microphone array design was deployed for this test to capture the acoustic signature on the ground from the helicopter under maneuver conditions. An analysis of the acoustic emissions indicated the presence of blade-vortex interactions, not only during the rolls towards the advancing side of the main rotor, but also rolls towards the retreating side and during pitch-up maneuvers. The strength of the interaction noise was found to be strongly dependent on the acceleration of the vehicle.
U.S. Army Combat Capability Development Command Aviation and Missile Center (DEVCOM AvMC) and Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) developed the Mission Systems Flying Testbed (MSFTB) to enable rapid evaluation of innovative technologies and integration approaches against Modular Open System Approach (MOSA) objectives. The MSFTB is a flight test capability to evaluate and demonstrate integration of mission systems to inform Army stakeholders on satisfaction of Modular Open System goals for the Army Aviation enterprise, Future Vertical Lift family of systems, and enduring aviation platforms.
Corrosion occurs in diverse environments mainly on metallic parts. Helicopters are made of a huge percentage of metallic parts and need to have several maintenance steps to guarantee its functioning and its durability. The military helicopters are flying in different kinds of environment, which cover large spectrum of severity of the atmospheric corrosion [1]. In maritime conditions, the most influencing factor is the Time of Wetness, which is a direct result Relative Humidity and Salt loading. The main material used for aircraft and that is suffering from corrosion is aluminium. There are plenty of data to follow the corrosion as a function of the environmental conditions, mainly on the sensitivity with sodium chloride, Relative Humidity, film thickness, etc... [2][3]. The maintenance efficiency on helicopters is dependent on the environmental severity. The U.S. armed forces estimate $10.2 billion in corrosion costs for their aviation and missile fleets during 2016 [4] [5] [6]. The aim of the present analysis consists of defining the Condition Based Maintenance related to corrosion risk to better apply a maintenance program when it is really needed.
The use of additive manufacturing to produce rotorcraft components is challenging due to demanding material property performance requirements. The need to contend with high cycle fatigue, fretting, and vibratory loading conditions has driven our industry to use high pedigree materials that are fully characterized and with well established and understood processes to transform them into parts. No additive manufacturing processes or materials approach this level of understanding today, making it difficult to utilize the technology to manufacture components designed to be produced using conventional methods. This has limited consideration of the technology in the sustainment segment of our business. Customers have a quite different perspective. Additive manufacturing has been identified by the Department of Defense as a critical technology for the sustainment of their vehicles and weapons systems. Each branch of the military and the Defense Logistics Agency has resources and facilities established to support the proliferation of 3D printing capability. They have all experienced success producing shop aides, tools, prototypes, and surrogate parts to address real time, point of use challenges in depots and in some cases, at or near the battlefield. This success has prompted the DoD to challenge our industry to find ways to utilize this technology to address component shortages due to obsolescence, lost tooling, or a lack of qualified sources. This paper presents Sikorsky's activities and programs that have been initiated to meet this challenge. This will include approaches for component characterization and business case analysis used to evaluate the practicality of using additively manufactured surrogate parts in legacy vehicles.
The current US DoD has recognized that their asymmetric advantage is eroding1. Adversaries have had over 25 years to counter the US playbook and weapon systems (Ref. [1]). The US Army Future Vertical Lift (FVL) programs have identified several key tenets that their airborne weapon systems need to ensure they maintain asymmetric advantage. (1) New and upgraded mission capabilities of their airborne platforms need to get to the field faster (Ref. [2]). One of the current roadblocks to achieving this is the extensive full-system regression testing that ends up being required when there are mission system changes (Ref. [3]). (2) More competition is needed to help generate "quicker, better, faster" capabilities (Ref. [4]). "Vendor lock" inherent in current system designs hinders the speed at which technology advances (Ref. [4, 5]). (3) Improved portability of mission capability across the FVL and enduring fleet (Ref. [6, 7]). The ability to more easily reuse technology will help maintain advantage by eliminating the time needed to develop platform specific solutions (Ref. [4, 6]). The request for Modular Open System Architecture (MOSA) solutions has been a practice to try to address the items above (Ref. [8]). Most air vehicle and mission system providers are today providing MOSA solutions but the required benefits have not yet been fully realized. MOSA standards as they exist today do a very good job of identifying electronics hardware and software architectures. However, they fall short on physical aircraft integration and consistency in architecture among aircraft systems. Minimizing aircraft wiring and structural modifications, increasing speed to fielding, and portability among multiple systems types are all part of integrating highly MOSA compliant solutions. The US Army FVL programs have required a "digital backbone" (Ref. [7, 9, 10]) to address these integration issues and ensure that they can maintain asymmetric advantage. Unique requirements affecting the digital backbone include: - Power and power distribution (Ref. [9]) - Thermal management (Ref. [9, 11]) - Packaging and installation (Ref. [9]) - Air Vehicle data distribution (Ref. [9]) - Mission System data distribution (Ref. [9]) - Isolation of air vehicle and mission system (Ref. [9]) This paper will provide an introduction to the envisioned digital backbone for US Army, Future Vertical Lift aircraft. The paper will also offer discussion of digital backbone impacts on aircraft and avionics size, weight, power and cost, as well as technology considerations to address interoperability, safety, security, qualification, and accommodations for new, as well as, legacy avionics technology.
The U.S. Army monitors the structural integrity of its rotary-wing aircraft fleet through annual evaluations and reporting via the Airframe Condition Evaluation (ACE) program. ACE evaluations capture the location and character of structural defects for each aircraft, which are then available for trending and detailed analysis by engineers with the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center (CCDC AvMC). As analytic methods are increasingly advanced through the digital thread, CCDC AvMC has sought to improve available trending, modeling, and analysis tools beyond status quo to provide higher fidelity visuals to both aid communication with decision makers, and also to reveal structural defect trends which may not otherwise be evident. This paper will detail the development and utility of the ACE Color Mapping Application within the ACE Mapping Module and its impact on product support of U.S. Army aircraft with regard to airframe structural integrity.
The demonstration and testing of tactile cueing is the subject of a common research undertaking by the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center (CCDC AvMC) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The primary objective was to test a torque protection system with both a stick shaking cue generated with an attachable stick shaker and a soft stop cue generated by an active inceptor system. It was tested by five pilots in flight on the RASCAL JUH-60A helicopter and by four pilots in the ground-based simulator of the ACT/FHS (H-135) research helicopter based on a common set of high performance takeoff mission profiles. The qualitative evaluation showed that the soft stop provided a greater workload reduction than the shaker and was the preferred cue. However, a shaker cue is a promising alternative when the application of an active inceptor system is not possible.
The Army's Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) program is much bigger than the two ambitious high speed helicopters that Bell and Sikorsky will now get more than $1 billion to build. At least five other major moving pieces must come together on time to turn the final aircraft, whoever makes it, into a working weapon: - a new Improved Turbine Engine built by GE; - helicopter-launched mini-drones called Air Launched Effects (ALE); - a new Long-Range Precision Munition (LRPM), with the Israeli Spike-NLOS as the initial version; - an Integrated Missile Launcher (IML) to launch both the missile and the drones; - and the underlying electronic framework of standards and interfaces to plug it all together, the Modular Open Systems Architecture (MOSA). *Recently, FARA has added a 20mm Gatling Gun being developed by The Advanced Rotorcraft Armament and Protection System (ARAPS) program team at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Center (CCDC) Armaments Center The Army is "not just focused on the air vehicle, but focused on the weapon system," said Brig. Gen. Walter Rugen, Future Vertical Lift director at Army Futures Command, in a call this morning with reporters. [1] While some have questioned the viability of fielding the FARA in ten years, e.g. by 2028, others have offered reasons on why the plan for a next-gen recon aircraft needs to be accelerated. Who knows how much money will be available to the Army for sustaining its aviation fleet as budget walls close in over the next several years? Trilliondollar deficits have a way of impinging on defense budgets. What is proposed, though, is that the Army compress its development schedule for a new armed recon rotorcraft so that our soldiers begin to be better equipped against the likes of Russia and China somewhere around 2025, rather than after 2030. A whole lot can happen in ten years. We don't need another Army development program to be overtaken by events. (2) However, since the FARA will likely be in service for a half-century or more, it makes sense to conduct rigorous analysis up front to ensure that what is fielded has the capabilities to provide the most value for the warfighter and the taxpayer. Prior to spending billions of dollars and decades producing the FARA aircraft, it is prudent to spend the time to determine what the right solutions should be. Many projects fail when the initial requirements are not well thought out and the ramifications are not clearly understood. To solve the tension between these conflicting desires, designers need to iterate the design sensitivities with operational analysis to show the pros and cons of each attribute, alone and in concert, but ultimately the Army must prioritize its requirements and potentially make hard trade-off decisions.(3) The major objective of this paper is provide a methodology for the necessary understanding of the push and pull of technology readiness and application through trade studies and operational analysis early to avoid disappointments and to minimize FARA slippages and cost increases. This will be accomplished by reviewing Lessons Learned from the AHIP/OH-58D Kiowa Warrior and the LHX/RAH-66 Comanche development programs. While the authors were directly involved in these programs as Army Aviation engineers, managers and senior executives, the major emphasis for this paper will be to address how the government-industry teams brought these programs successfully through initial development. Fortunately, for the AHIP/OH-58D Kiowa Warrior Development Program there are excellent documentation of the government-industry team participation in References 4 and 5. While the authors strongly endorse the lessons learned in these documents, they will have a few of their own. For the LHX/RAH66 Comanche Development Program there is considerably less documentation; however, the authors will provide Army and their lessons learned. It is hoped that this paper and the referenced documents will be read, and the lessons learned by both government and industry involved in the FARA development program.
This interface standard applies to fuzes used in airborne weapons that use a 3-in fuze well. It defines: Physical envelope of the fuze well at the interface with the fuze. Load bearing surfaces of the fuze well. Physical envelope of the fuze and its connector. Mechanical features (e.g., clocking feature). Connector type, size, location and orientation. Retaining ring and its mechanical features (e.g., thread, tool interface). Physical envelope of the retaining ring at the interface with the fuze. Physical space available for installation tools. Torque that the installation tool shall be capable of providing. This standard does not address: Materials used or their properties. Protective finish. Physical environment of the weapon. Explosive interface or features (e.g., insensitive munitions (IM) mitigation). Charging tube. Torque on the retaining ring or loads on the load bearing surfaces. Each fuze and weapon combination should be evaluated to ensure that the weapon system will satisfy all safety, reliability, and performance requirements throughout its lifecycle.
In order to maximize range, a substantial portion of the interior volume of aircraft is allocated for fuel containment. To ensure the safety of aircrew and passengers, these systems must contain fuel and retain critical structural integrity in the event of a crash, self-seal and retain structural capability in the event of penetration, and suppress fire in the event of proximate ignition. Traditionally, light weight aircraft such as rotorcraft have accomplished these functions with heavy self-sealing bladder offset and isolated from primary structure. Boeing and the US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center's Aviation Development Directorate (ADD), together with the Joint Aircraft Survivability Program Office, have developed and demonstrated a structurally integrated fuel containment system that efficiently tolerates crash, self-seals, and suppresses fire at a lower weight and volume than traditional systems, thus maximizing space and weight capacity for fuel and payload.
The Autonomous Sustainment Technologies for Rotorcraft Operations-Structures (ASTRO-S) project between U. S. Army Combat Capability Missile Center, Aviation Development Directorate-Eustis (FCDD-AMV-E) and Sikorsky developed and validated a range of technologies to enable reduced airframe maintenance burden, increase operational availability, and provide key enabling technologies relative to Army's transition to the new paradigm of Maintenance Free Operational Periods (MFOP) for the rotorcraft of the future. Methods were developed for autonomous characterization of major damage and residual strength expressed as a Structural Health Index (SHI) for advanced durable and damage tolerant composite aerospace structural assemblies with redundant load paths, enabling targeted inspections and strength-based fly / watch / repair decisions. A number of sensing technologies including fiber-optic strain measurement and piezo-based structural health assessment, along with a number of innovative advanced algorithms that intelligently use changes in monitored structural responses, were implemented in a comprehensive architecture to detect, localize, and assess the severity of structural damage. Extensive testing on full-scale, multiload-path composite structures to assess feasibility and effectiveness of the developed technologies, as well as understand application and transition challenges, has convincingly shown that damage detection, localization, and severity assessment in an autonomous fashion is feasible. Further, it was shown that the concept of a trendable SHI to assess residual strength, is viable, although additional full-scale test cases are needed to further validate and mature the approach. Overall, these key findings affirm suitability of the technical approach and associated algorithms for reducing maintenance burden by triggering rather than scheduling inspections and potentially deferring repairs in high op-tempo environments. These structural health management technologies will be key enablers supporting Army's future rotorcraft when operating in an untethered multi-domain battle space.
Landing helicopters in Degraded Visual Environments (DVE) is one of the most challenging maneuvers pilots perform. The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, Aviation & Missile Center, Aviation Development Directorate has been working to develop flight guidance and sensor systems to provide the pilot with guidance and pilot cueing to land a helicopter, hover, and take off in DVE. During flight testing of the Brown Out Symbology System (BOSS) on an EH-60L Black Hawk, pilots reported very high workload requiring full concentration on the displays during approaches to landing in brownout. In order to reduce pilot workload, an approach to provide the pilot with a collective tactile cue based on coupling of the output of the approach to landing algorithms to the EH-60L collective trim servo was developed and flight tested. Flight testing of the coupled collective system demonstrated a reduction in pilot workload and increase in the pilot's situational awareness during landing in brownout. To further reduce pilot workload, the pilot cyclic and pedals have been coupled with the guidance symbology to allow for fully coupled landings. Details of the system are provided along with the initial results of flight testing of the system at Felker Army Airfield, Ft. Eustis VA.
An aircraft's survivability in a hostile environment is a mixture of factors that stem from both susceptibility and vulnerability. Conducting analyses that incorporate these factors into a blended solution is vital. One such analysis was conducted using the government-provided Air-Defense Artillery (ADA) simulation tool Radar Directed Gun System (RADGUNS). RADGUNS provides a three-dimensional engagement space to conduct one versus one encounters against Radio Frequency (RF) guided threats. Complex user-generated flight paths can be simulated with varying relative starting locations of the aircraft relative to the threat being considered. The simulations conducted incorporated various aircraft parameters. Aircraft velocity, acceleration rates, deceleration rates, vulnerable area, and radar cross section (RCS) were the primary parameters whose effects were investigated. For each encounter, the Probability of Hit (P H) and Probability of Kill given a Hit (P K|H) were calculated, accounting for the susceptibility and vulnerability segments of the kill chain, respectively. A holistic metric of the kill chain, Probability of Kill (PK), and Engagement Time were the primary results of each engagement. Varying prominent aircraft input parameters can provide key insights in the prediction of an aircraft's survivability. This paper will focus on the benefits of speed and maneuverability, obtainable with Sikorsky's X2 Technology™ in the realm of survivability versus radar and human guided threats.
Ludwig Rudolf Rüb, a passionate inventor, lived in poverty most of his life and is virtually unknown in the rotorcraft community. His inventions covered combustion engines and motorcycles first. Around 1900 he built a paddle-wheel plane under contract by Count Zeppelin, next he designed and built a first version of a coaxial rotor helicopter in Munich, and then he moved to Augsburg for building a large fixed-wing aircraft. None of these were ever finished. At the begin of WW I, with support of the German army, he took up a refined version of his coaxial rotor helicopter concept as a highly agile and maneuverable replacement of the observation balloons used in those times, which also was intended to take an active part in warfare by installing a machine gun or dropping bombs. It included some astonishing advanced features and with the help of his sons the construction was finished; ground testing started in June 1918. The end of the war immediately stopped all works; the contract of Versailles demanded the destruction of that vehicle and thus formed the end of the Rüb aeronautical work. Ludwig Rüb died 1918, after months of illness, without having seen the rotors turning.
The miniaturization of Digital RF Memory (DRFM) products is paving the way for a new generation of military products with tactical missions never before considered. Although DRFM products have been available and used in various capacities for many years, a reduction in size, weight, power, and cooling (SWAP-C) will allow the repurposing of an already proven technology.
U.S. involvement in the conflict in Southwest Asia has required prolonged deployment and field-level maintenance of hundreds of mission-critical Army aircraft. Theater settings present unique challenges for the U.S. Army and its aircraft maintainers, crews, and pilots alike. The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation and Missile Center deploys Liaison Engineers (LEs) to Southwest Asia in order to maintain airworthiness by delivering hands-on technical and logistical support to theater air crews and maintenance entities. This paper, with input from several previously deployed LEs, offers a look into the duties, responsibilities, and challenges of the LE in Southwest Asia.
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