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The top military aviation stories of 2011

David Cenciotti, the Italian blogger behind the Aviationist blog, has written a lengthy and must read post for military aviation buffs listing the top military aviation stories of 2011. David began by noting that some of the top military aviation stories of 2011 would be entitled the “Libya Air War,” the “F-22 grounding,” “Stealth Black Hawk down” and the “Captured RQ-170 drone in Iran.” Hence, David has compiled the following list of interesting “messages” for the year:

There’s an increasing need for drones but….
Drones are also vulnerable – as we have seen in Iran.
Drones are remotely controlled by humans meaning they fail because of human error as there is no life or death imperative to return the drone safely to its base.
Black projects and advanced stealth tech are not only speculation – as shown by photos circulating of the downed chopper after the raid to kill Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan.
Advanced stealth tech is not just US stuff anymore as chunks of stealth technology literally fall into the hands of Pakistan, Iran, China and perhaps Russia.
It was a tough year for Lockheed Martin’s stealths – they have even been targeted for satire by Iran.
The war against Iran has already started and is being fought using drones and computer viruses.
Wars can come unannounced (like in Libya…) and air forces can’t be unprepared for one.

David also went into considerable detail about each and every one of these messages as he has written extensively throughout the year about these topics. He also listed a list of lessons from the Libya campaign, Operation Unified Protector, as he feel its an example of how Air Power should not be used.

However and what might interest British military aviation buffs the most were David’s comments about the British Apache helicopters. Specifically, David noted that the Apaches on board the HMS Ocean flew in pairs and completed roughly 25 combat sorties to hit 100 targets in the Brega and Tripoli areas but another 40 missions were cancelled because of insufficient intelligence information along with the threat posed by Libyan anti-aircraft systems. They also showed the need for a floating device and a new canopy jettison system to improve the crew’s survivability in the event of a ditching.

On the other hand, French combat helicopters were flown within strike packages and they were able to perform 90% of NATO helicopter strikes to destroy more than 600 targets in Libya. In fact, French helicopters were crucial to the eventual taking of Tripoli and the final victory for the rebels.

Hence, David’s entire lengthy post about the use of military aviation in 2011, which will probably go down in history as a potentially game changing year for military aviation in general, is well worth a read by military aviation buffs.

New flying car concept: The Transformer

The web aviation blog has pointed out that Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute had received US$988 000 late last year to develop an autonomous flight system for a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) military flying car concept called the Transformer. According to DARPA’s plans, the Transformer is intended to be a four-wheeled military vehicle that can also turn into a Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) aircraft. Specifically, it will seat four and have a range of 250 nautical miles on a single tank of fuel plus a payload of 1 000 pounds.

The Transformer concept is designed to improve ground troop mobility – especially over difficult or hostile terrain. However, the flight system will be one of the many challenges with the Transformer’s development as ordinary soldiers will not be able to fly the vehicle. Hence, the flight system will largely need to be automatic – which is where Carnegie Mellon steps in as their robotics team won DARPA’s Urban Challenge in 2007 to design an automatic car.

Also taking part in the development of the Transformer will be AAI and Lockheed Martin who will create the overall design concept plus Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne who will develop the engines.

Avoiding military flight activity

John Ewing has recently written an interesting post on Aviation Mentor about a topic that is not written about very often: How to avoid fast moving military aircraft activity. He began his post by noting an incident that involved an Air Force F-16CG colliding in mid air with a Cessna 172 over Florida. The Air Force pilot was able to eject from his aircraft with only minor injuries but the Cessna pilot was not so fortunate and he ended up loosing his life.

John then wrote about the following three keys to safely sharing airspace with fast moving military aircraft:

Understand what is regulatory and non-regulatory airspace. This includes special use and other airspace.
Know where military aircraft are scheduled to be operating.
Recognize the limits of "see and avoid.”

John also wrote more in-depth about the limits of “see and avoid” and he noted that most traffic collision avoidance is accomplished using this technique. However and in the case of the collision between the F-16 and the Cessna, the closure rate between the two accident aircraft was just over 20 seconds between the time that ATC received a conflict alert and when the impact occurred.

Ironically though, the biggest single factor that caused the collision was that it occurred inside Class C airspace where the Cessna pilot least expected to encounter fast moving fighters. In fact, the F-16 was involved in a training exercise and was actually off course by several miles. In other words, you should always be prepared for the unexpected when you are up in the sky.

Virtual aviation artwork

Jerry Boucher is an old colleague of mine from my days in the computer games business. Now he creates awesome pictures of military aircraft, like this Lightning F6. You can find lots more on his website. You can download them as desktop wallpaper or you can buy large, high quality prints from his online store.