Amazing Technology Now Being Fielded Worldwide (Part III)

By ANN Correspondent Kevin "Hognose" O'Brien

Modular Cockpits

If your nation operates multiple combat aircraft, a single G-FET-II can train all the crews. One very neat feature of the GFET-II was the modular cockpits. In an hour mechanics can loosen a few bolts. Then the old cockpit is winched out a hatch, and a new one lowered in. A couple of modular plugs are connected, the same bolts are tightened, and the air data model for the new aircraft is loaded in the computer system.

This initial machine, which is bound for Malaysia, has cockpits for that nation's combat aircraft: the F/A-18D, the MiG-29, and the Hawk Mk-208. Each cockpit has the correct seat angle, control stick, throttle, and pedals, as well as the correct instruments. The HUD is projected on the viewscreen.

As you can imagine, the G-FET-II must be preflighted, like a real aircraft. It might not be a "real" airplane but it produces real-airplane levels of acceleration, and there's always that million pounds of torque to consider - you really don't want your body in between that torque and its intended destination. One of the things you check during preflight is the presence of those bolts!

While I liked the versatility of the multiple-aircraft-cockpits, there's another reason that the gondola's cockpit can be interchanged. In normal use, the G-FET-II provides video (3 live camera feeds) and whatever physiological data that the customer requires. The pilot can be instrumented for heart rate, brain waves, skin perspiration, O2 saturation, basically anything modern science can imagine plugging a pilot into. That means that a simple change of modules can provide a cockpit that is oriented not to pilot training but to instrumented scientific or aeromedical research. This means that a single G-FET-II can do double duty as a pilot-training simulator and a research centrifuge.

The bold red trace (above) shows the acceleration experienced on one of Glenn's flights. The horizontal line is a limit that can be set (in this case at 6.5 or 7G) by simulation controllers. The machine won't exceed this limit. Another screen captures physiological data, another shows loads on the electric motors, and another shows the pilot on video in real-time.

Uses for the G-FET II

Obviously, most customers will use this for aircrew training, but a few other ideas come to mind as well. It could be a worthwhile part of an aircrew selection program. After all, training is expensive; it's not too hard to imagine ways that the centrifuge can be used to help narrow down the many volunteers for flightcrew duty to those that are most likely to complete the program.

It would be possible for multiple G-FET-II devices to be interconnected to make a hellishly realistic - but economical, compared to live 1 v. 1 or many v. many flights  - air combat simulator. This also enables the training of combat profiles that are risky to fly in peacetime conditions, for example, low-level ingress/egress in mountainous territory.

Strike leaders could in some circumstances use a device like this to "fly" a critically important mission before the execution order is given - to assure that there are no glitches in the plan, to compare prospective courses of action, or simply for the rehearsal value - but this would require, one thinks, quite a wide distribution of these machines.

I've already mentioned its possible use in research and development. But it might also be useful to R&D some combat tactics. You can do things, like flying to the brink of G Induced Loss of Consciousness (G-LOC), that would be foolish in an actual aircraft. For instance, it's not too hard to imagine a G-FET-II or a successor device, programmed with data models for US and Allied aircraft, to also be programmed with the flight envelope of a new enemy SAM or AAM, so that effective evasive measures can be developed.

Of course, someone's going to suggest that it would be a great amusement park ride, although a bit pricey. Well… ETC is miles ahead of you. Leveraging much of the same technology, ETC developed the Mission: Space theme park ride in cooperation with Disney World (the cooperation has gotten a bit sticky, with the two parties currently entangled in a widely publicized breach-of-contract suit). The Mission: Space ride has some differences, dictated by its use as a theme park entertainment for ordinary people. It has multiple arms on each of its four centrifuges; it makes a lot fewer Gs than a training device for fit, young military pilots, and it flies a canned "mission profile" rather than respond to user control. But the essential concept of acceleration forces ("G") delivered by a centrifuge in tight coordination with visual and aural cueing, to create the most realistic simulated environment possible, is identical.

What's Next?

While the G-FET-II stands at the apex of ETC's flight simulation devices today, nobody at ETC looks ready to rest on his laurels. This device is likely to sire many offspring. Customers come with their own ideas, and ETC's international staff is already brimming with new concepts.

One thing that is very likely is a machine that supports 2-seat cockpits for crew training (some side-by-side 2-seater pits could probably fit in the present gondola).

To ETC, the potential for more realistic flight training - what the company calls Tactical Flight Simulation - is obvious, and the company will be working hard to develop and sell these machines. Then comes the integration of multiple such machines. The technology is in place, only the customer has been lacking.

If You Can't Afford the Centrifuge, what then?

By now you're absolutely convinced that the ETC G-FET-II is the ultimate flight simulation device. But your wife caught you digging the ten-meter deep hole in the garden and now she won't let you spend the tens of millions it will take to complete the installation. Yep, money is definitely a requirement when you want to buy this sort of machine.

I'm half afraid that my readers will call bait-and-switch on me for mentioning some of ETC's panoply of other simulation devices, but unless you have a whole lot of people whose bosses' bosses call you "Boss," you probably can't order up a G-FET-II.

For the flight training market, ETC has some intermediate-sized centrifugal simulators under development. One of the more interesting possibilities is the use of an ETC centrifuge for upset training. Aero-News has in the past covered the Upset Domain Training Institute, headed by Donald W. Baggett, a flight instructor and retired Naval Aviator. Don plans to use an ETC GL-1500 two-seat centrifugal simulator to explore parts of the flight domain where you just can't go in a real airplane; he'll also have a GAT-II. (If you're a regular Aero-News reader you know we've been looking at a lot of upset training lately). We'll keep you posted on progress of the UDTI, which is a subsidiary of ETC, but you can start with a presentation that Don has prepared at www.etcupsetrecovery.com.

So, there should be before too long places that civilians can get instruction in centrifugal simulators. And for those that would operate a simulator, the G-FET-II has many siblings that trade some capability off for increased affordability.

To be continued...

FMI: www.etcusa.com, www.etcupsetrecovery.com