Well, guys,
you have picked the coolest
independent activities period class you
could ever do with ground school. This
is the most awesome thing possible when
I saw the course offerings. So, kudos to
Tina and Phil for teaching this. This is
a good good gig.
Uh I go by Laz. It's a fighter pilot
thing. All fighter pilots have call
signs.
Um they're not like what you see in the
movies. By the way, Top Gun is the worst
movie for any fighter pilot to watch.
It's terrible. Drives you crazy. No one
is called Maverick because they're the
most awesome thing on the face of the
planet. Never happens that way. Uh
you're always named for something silly.
So, the previous discussion about uh
crew resource management, if you're
single seat, you still have air traffic
control, you have other guys. Uh I am
living proof that that's 100% true. So,
I won't get into it too much, but
suffice to say if you know the biblical
story of Lazarus, you know a lot about
how I got my name and I'll leave it at
that. Normally, that's over a beer
afterwards. So, we're here to talk about
uh F-22 flight control stuff. I'm going
to give you the the punchline right at
the start. I'm here to tell you that
everything you're learning So, who who's
actually flown airplanes here already?
Like sailplanes. So, a lot of guys,
right? So, a lot of guys So, first time
then for probably the other half of the
class or so. Uh so, here's what I'm here
to tell you. The same stuff that you're
learning with respect to Cessnas and all
the stuff with respect to the ground
school, um there's no difference
between this and between my beloved
Raptor. It's the same thing. So, there's
great relevance. And you as MIT guys
have the ability to derive and figure
out what makes the Raptor look the way
that it does and we can talk a lot about
the flight controls. It's not cosmic. We
can go through that.
So, with that, uh they always have the
standard personal background slide. Um
here's here's the gig. I'll keep it
really simple. I am a test pilot. Uh
which means I am a fighter pilot and I'm
also an engineer. It means I like Beavis
and Butt-Head greatly and I read Carl
Sagan. It's the same thing to me. Uh so,
as a fighter test pilot, you live in the
world of being a fighter pilot, uh but
you also have the ability to understand
MATLAB and to be able to do cool neat
MIT-ish kind of things because all of
the stuff that you're working with as a
test pilot are brand new things. Uh new
weapons, new avionics, new airplanes in
some cases. And that's not the world of
a fighter pilot. Fighter pilots are
exceptionally good at taking this
airplane to combat and doing the normal
kind of missions with it, but when
there's something new on board, that
requires an engineer. So, uh I have a
deep deep connection with this
institution. I graduated here finished
up here last year in 2018 and then a
whole bunch of other kind of funky stuff
along the way.
Uh two combat tours. Uh that was a lot
of fun. I'll tell you flying is one of
my great passions. Flying and getting
shot at and missed is my second great
passion. That's much cooler. Um and then
when you can fly and you can use that
airplane to actually protect people from
bad guys, that's that's that's life
fulfilling, right? To go get a chance to
go do that. So, we can talk a little bit
more through that as well. Um test
pilot, we get a chance to fly a lot of
different stuff. So, you'll see this uh
76 different airplanes. Uh that might
sound weird to kind of the rest of the
world, but in the world of flight test,
that's pretty normal. And the reason
that's there is it's just like like So,
I By the way, warning, right? To the
class. I I talk a lot in terms of
movies, right? Game of Thrones shows or
whatever television shows and sports
because no matter where you come from,
those three topics always tend to bring
everybody all together. So, it is just
like what you've, you know, when you've
gone car shopping and you sit in this
car and go, "Ah, man, I really like this
way the steering wheel feels, but I hate
the way the radio is set up." And you go
to another car and you go, "Ah, man,
this is great from a, you know, from the
sunroof or whatever, but this stinks."
Uh that same kind of the discernment
that you have when you're shopping for
cars, you know, that this airplane is a
couple hundred million dollars. You
don't want to be wrong about that. And
so, you want your test pilots very very
experienced in a lot of different
airplanes. So, I've got a chance to fly
helicopters. Spectacular. In pilot
training, I don't know why, but we send
our worst pilot training students to
helicopters. It's the dumbest idea
because helicopters are really really
challenging to go fly. Um but we've had
a chance to fly helicopters. Your
discussion, Tina, earlier about right
away, I was laughing with that cuz I've
flown a zeppelin uh an airship. It It's
quite spectacular. It's a big lazy boy
couch
uh with a big trim wheel and big engines
that actually pivot on the outside so
you can turn the whole ship based on
that. Um that's pretty normal for for
being a test pilot is getting a chance
to fly a lot of different airplanes more
so than just one particular airplane
your whole life. Most of my stuff is in
fighters.
Um so, I've flown every frontline
fighter with the exception of the F-35.
Hopefully, I'll fix that soon shortly in
a few months.
Um but a lot of stuff. So, MIT guy,
Harvard guy, uh did some stuff. It's
it's been a good life. Um really at the
end of the day, what I want to impress
on you is uh I am 100% zero different
from anybody in this room. I just have
more battle scars on me just from a
lifetime of doing this. Uh I started off
flying Cessnas. I did that for several
years in my life. I still do it. I um
love it. Fly sailplanes. Still do it.
Love it.
Uh and all the stuff that you learn with
this has direct applicability to the
more advanced fighter airplanes. In
fact, I'll tell you, this is actually
harder to fly than the Raptor. And we'll
talk a little bit more about that as we
go through. All right. So, more fun and
games. All right. So, now comes the
class participation part. Uh my my talks
are very interactive. I love to kind of
hear what you guys think. So, we'll do a
quick thought exercise. I'll try and
keep a mental note cuz I stink at
writing on a chalkboard.
Um but we'll chat through this. Just so
you can understand that there's really
not that much difference from what
you're learning now to go off to do
something like that. So, why does a
Cessna look the way that it does? And
why does a Raptor look the way that it
does? What were the engineers trying to
do? And just just call them out. You
know where we're going. Guys, just
shoot.
Is it related to the Raptor? Okay, so
explain. Um you have um way more area
that's clear. The wings are uh swept
back and are kind of below you in the
back so you can go. Yeah. See over
there, right? So, you you've brought up
two things. One is the position of the
wings, right? So, in a Cessna,
uh the wings are obviously
Well, in a lot of airplanes really, not
just Cessnas, but in a Cessna, the wings
are directly above you. Big Hershey bar
wing. You know, why do they put the
wings this way in a Cessna?
You're You're doing great so far. Keep
going, man. I'm I'm going to answer
that. Get get in or out of a Cirrus in
the heavy rain and you will immediately
see the value of that Cessna wing. Yeah.
They did this so that my wife doesn't
yell at me in bad weather conditions so
that you can get inside the airplane
without getting completely wet. The
other part about the high wing is it's
great for visibility. Looking down,
right? Um where this is terrible is if
you're turning and you have to be able
to see through the wing because you're
kind of doing the old, you know, looking
over the side to see uh kind of out the
outside. So, that's one advantage,
right? Of where Raptor, right? It's not
a high wing or it's kind of like a mid
wing, if you will, but that wing is well
after the cockpit for what reason?
Visibility? Yeah.
That's that's the big huge reason why.
And then you also brought up the idea of
the swept wings.
All right. Uh why the swept wings
compared to, say, straight wings?
Um well, when they have an aerodynamic
advantage. Okay. What's that What's
What's that advantage? Um
something about um
You got a winglet or like wingtip
vortices?
Close.
Close. I'll I'll I'll stop picking on
you because you're a bold and went
first. Go ahead.
Yeah, Mach. So, so explain Mach.
Uh fast Closer you get to the speed of
sound, more compressibility is
important. Yep. Uh aerodynamically, the
wing really behaves
like it's going at the speed normal to
the leading edge.
Yeah. So, you ever you ever see those
old like the first jet airplanes that
came out? Um the wings on the jet
airplanes had wings that looked exactly
like this.
Um and that was a problem. I'm going to
do something I thought I wouldn't try to
do, but I'll try to do it. So, here's
your swept wing, right? Here's the air
as it comes over the wing.
Right? And then what ends up happening
is uh really what you care about is the
air that's going over top of the wing
that's normal to the chord line of the
wing itself. You know what I mean when I
say chord? Right? Just like this
imaginary line. So, on a Hershey bar
wing, all of that air hits the wing and
it goes directly over top of that chord
line of the wing. So, like when we
talked about over here, the wings have
camber.
So, what happens to the air as it goes
over top of any wing? Doesn't matter if
it's a fighter wing or whatever else.
But what what happens to the velocity of
the air as it goes over top?
Goes faster, right? So, if I'm already
going fast and air hits my wing and goes
over top of my wing and goes faster than
the rest of the airplane, uh that's
going to cause a problem when you get to
very high speeds approaching Mach cuz
what ends up happening is you'll you'll
get a shock wave forming on that wing.
And the moment you get a shock wave
forming there, that's like a big brick
wall to the to the wind and that causes
all types of drag downstream, slows down
the airplane, all types of things. So,
what they found is I can sweep the wing,
right? When I sweep the wing, some of
that air is normal to the chord line.
So, if this is like the fuselage over
here and here's the wing and it comes
back over here. Um some of that air is
going to be that way and some of that
air is going to actually go out and go
uh
go spanwise, if you will, like this. So,
I'm trying to draw this correctly to get
the to get the right angles, but you you
kind of get my point. So, some of that
air goes spanwise.
Some of the reason why you have wing
winglets, right? To present prevent some
of that drag that happens at the
winglet. But then also, what you're
worried about is rather than the full
component of this wind, you're only
worried about the wind that's normal to
the flow
of the way the chord line is set up. So,
that's why they sweep the wings, right?
Okay, so what else?
Why does a Cessna look this way? Why
does this look like that? Go ahead.
Uh
yeah, go ahead. Both.
Uh
stealth and payload and armor. Okay, so
stealth. Payload is an important thing.
Let's talk about the payload for a
second. Actually, we'll talk about
stealth since you brought it up. Um so
look at that plan form and what do you
notice with regards to stealth?
All angles. All angles, right? That
angle, that angle, that angle. No right
angles. Yeah, no right angles. So the
reason is and I'll do
my high-tech pizza, you know, aid here,
right?
So who's who's EE in here? Anyone EE
from MIT? Okay. So if you're a beam of
radar energy,
you love this, right? You love when you
have a nice flat thing directly to
reflect so all that radar energy you put
at me goes right back at you, right? Now
what happens if I take that panel and I
go like this a little bit, right? So
yeah, there's not so much. Now I'll
really mess with your mind. What happens
if I do that, right? And now you have to
start dealing with angles and edges,
right? Um
Raptor is this constant fight between
the EE guys and the aeronautical
engineers.
Um when you make an airplane like this
and you make angles like this and you
make it there's no right angles or
whatever else like that, you're exactly
right. It greatly reduces the stealth.
Now this is not Wonder Woman's airplane.
It's not like you just become invisible
and no one can see you. Um but it's very
very hard to see uh on radar. Um but
there's a challenge in that because when
you make an airplane that looks like
this, which the EE guys tend to like,
the aero engineer guys tend to hate
because it makes the airplane unstable.
Uh so we'll talk about that. Um this
airplane very very stable, very very
stable. Okay, what else? Couple other
things. So why does a Raptor look this
way?
Why does a Cessna look this way?
Go ahead. Uh I feel like the Cessna is
designed to be produced with cheap
commodity materials.
Yep. The Raptor probably uses exotic
metals, exotic metals. Yep.
Titanium, whole types of stuff, right?
So this is an airplane people buy
commercially.
If you had if you were Jeff Bezos, you
would never purchase this airplane.
Cuz it is hyper expensive. Um
my jets were test jets, uh which means
they were very different, almost like
hand-built custom F-22s. Each one
3 to 400 million dollars a piece. Uh
scary, right? In terms of how much it
actually costs. Uh the canopy on this
thing probably worth more than about 10
of these kind of all put together.
Um the payload part, you brought up
payload, too. So the other part about
the stealth, if you can see here, I've
got doors. So there's a big main weapon
bay door, big 17-ft doors, if you will,
and then there's doors on the side that
come open here. Um
Unlike a Cessna, I mean we talked about
you can Where'd Tina go? Oh, she
disappeared. The dropped object,
dropping pumpkins? Uh my pumpkins are
1,000 lb, uh come off the airplane just
like that, uh different missiles and
different bombs or whatever. The center
of gravity of the airplane is right
about where my finger is. And so I have
these weapons that are here that when I
release them, it's suddenly like
dropping a car off the front end of your
airplane. And so there's a huge center
of gravity shift that happens
just like that. And so the flight
controls need to be able to compensate
for something like that. Last piece I'll
give you just for sake of time is what's
the speed envelope, if you will, that
this airplane kind of operates.
What's that?
Oh, I wish 200. Man, I wish 200. I would
buy one right now if I could go 200 in
this thing.
160. Yeah, I mean on a good day, right?
You might get you know, if you were to
get a really really high-end general
aviation airplane, 160 knots or so
something like that. You can get more
than that, but then you start getting to
some real like Mercedes-Benz exotic
class kind of general aviation airplanes
that are like the Cirrus
that go beyond there. Um in general,
you're talking somewhere between 80 and
about 140, 150 for most of them or
something like that. Uh this airplane,
if believe it or not, this airplane can
actually fly as slow as the Cessna. But
it also can fly two times the speed of
sound.
Um and it does that pretty easily,
believe it or not. Um also this
airplane, um 60° of bank starts to get
really extreme, a little bit
uncomfortable. This airplane
fully aerobatic, doesn't care, pulls 9
Gs. You guys know what Gs are? The
accelerations of gravity. So everything,
you know, my human head, well, MIT MIT
heads weigh about 20 lb or so, a little
bit more than the than the norm. So at 9
Gs, everything on your body weighs nine
times as much. So that's 180 lb with
your neck has to be able to support
that. Imagine everything on this
airplane has to be stressed such that it
can tolerate that load and more. Also
can go negative G as well. Uh
altitude-wise, I think the highest I've
ever had a Cessna was about 14,000 ft
and it was wheezing. I mean it was
really really hard for it to get up
there. Uh this airplane goes 0 ft all
the way up to about 60 to 65,000 ft. So
it flies twice as high of what you would
see on your commercial airliners. What
I'm trying to impress on you is it's a
huge flight envelope with a very
different solution set
um compared to what you might have on a
Cessna. The only other thing I would say
with Raptor is uh this was something
that took me a while. My first combat
mission, I really understood this.
Uh in a Cessna, if I have a problem,
I can land and most likely people will
come out to help me and call home and
let everybody know I'm okay.
Uh in bad guy land,
uh if people are coming to get me,
they're they really are coming to get
me.
Uh so you're in very hostile territory
where you do not want to leave the
airplane if you can avoid it. So there's
a tremendous amount of redundancy that's
kind of built into this airplane. Uh
we'll talk more through that a little
bit. So anyway, um you've essentially
derived all of the challenges that a
flight control engineer would have to
deal with. um
I'll put this here just for sake of
making it easy to rest.
This airplane has what's called
reversible flight control system. What
does that mean?
You guys talked about that yet? Go
ahead. It means you It's basically
cables or when you move
Yep. say the direction of the ailerons.
Yep. So not only when you move the
stick. What happens if you go outside
the airplane, grab the aileron, move
that up and down? What happens inside?
The stick moves, right? So it's
reversible, right? So I move the stick
and the flight control surfaces will
deflect or I move the flight control
surfaces and the stick will deflect. So
they are directly connected with pulleys
and cables to one another. Um
For the guys who have flown, what does
the airplane feel like when you get to
100, 120, 130, 140 mph? I mean you're
really getting What what what does it
feel like on the control surfaces?
Yeah, lots. It gets heavy, right? It
gets real stick kind of heavy. Same
thing if you're slow, everything gets
kind of sloppy, if you will, and very
cuz you are directly feeling the air
loads on the airplane as transmitted to
the stick. Um in this airplane,
uh these flight control surfaces, this
this tail surface back here is about the
size of a lot of fighter wings. It's
huge. Um
and you can imagine at 120, 130, the
airplane's really hard to really move.
Well, what happens if you're going 1,000
mph? Um you could be Arnold
Schwarzenegger, you do not have the
strength to maneuver these controls
around. So this airplane has a very very
exotic hydraulic system and an computer
system and an electric system that
allows all that to operate. From the
hydraulics, I'm not kidding, there's
like 4,000 PSI of hydraulic fluid uh
that moves this whole thing around,
swings it back and forth.
Um from the electric standpoint, now
again, this is a reversible flight
control system, all manual. Um the
flight controls in this airplane don't
work unless the electrics are turned on
to go do it. Uh so your flight controls
are electrically
controlled, hydraulically powered but
electrically controlled, which is a
little weird when you think about it
because now all of a sudden electrical
problems in this airplane start
impacting your ability to fly the
airplane, which gets a little bit
strange. Um you guys ever hear of a
thing called a permanent magnetic
generator? Do you know what that is? A
little bit of a technical term.
Who knows? You know a lot, go ahead. Uh
is it a type of Is it a type of
generator that uses permanent magnets to
Outstanding. Yes, you have correctly
derived the definition of a permanent
magnetic generator. Now, the way it
works is um
this airplane has six permanent magnetic
generators. They are the primary source
of flight control power. All that has to
happen is the engines have to rotate.
That's it. So even if the engines are
shut down, I can just keep wind going
through the engines and they rotate.
They will rotate sufficient to generate
power from the permanent magnetic
generators. If those fail, the airplane
also has electrical generators on board.
There's two of them. There's actually
three of them on board. They can power
the flight controls as well. Worst case
scenario for a Raptor pilot, the engines
seize up, I lose my electrical power,
the only thing I have left is a battery.
And just like anything else battery, the
more you use it, the more it depletes.
So at that point, any deflection of the
flight control surfaces depletes the
electrical energy and you don't have
that much left to actually control it.
Okay, one last thing here, we'll move on
to the next slide. We'll talk a little
bit some just some definitions. Um the
wing has this thing on the front. You
know what that is what that's called?
Leading edge flaps, right? Okay,
perfect. All right. What's that called?
Ailerons. Um
now
What I What I hear I heard something
else. Flaps.
Ah, who who said that?
Ah, okay. Explain.
Uh it's a it's combination of both flap
and aileron. Um
flaps are on the outside, ailerons are
on the inside. And no, did I get that
backwards? Yep. All the way around.
Other way around, yeah. Yep. And um
depending on which you're doing of
flight you're you're in, you either have
full use of
control surfaces or part of it is
dedicated to being the flap and part of
it is dedicated to being the ailerons.
Yeah.
Outstanding. That's good. In this
airplane, this airplane has what?
Ailerons, right?
So if I want to go right and I move the
yoke right, what happens to the ailerons
here in this airplane?
Sorry, I'll put it that way, that way
you're set up. So I'm going this way. So
this aileron is doing what? Going down.
Going down, right? This aileron is doing
what? Up. Up, right? Um
So I'll cut to the chase.
These are ailerons. These are So, these
are the flaperons. Here in the inside,
these are the ailerons.
Um
in a Raptor uh those ailerons deflect
differentially. So, just like you have
in a Cessna, they can also both deflect
up. They can also both deflect down. The
flaps on the inboard are flaps and
ailerons, flaperons. So, they can
deflect up and they can deflect down.
We'll show why. That brings up some neat
stuff. Okay? Rudder, obviously, back
here.
Um in this airplane, when I push the
rudder left, the rudder deflects left. I
deflect right. Um this has two rudders.
Uh both rudders can deflect one way.
They can deflect the other way. They can
both deflect in, and there's some
reasons why you'd want to do that. And
they can both deflect out.
Uh the last piece I'll give you is uh
back here. Normally, this would be
called an elevator. But on a supersonic
airplane, we call these uh horizontal
stabilizers. Uh if you guys have read
the story of the Bell X-1, so Chuck
Yeager, when he went supersonic, we
talked a little bit earlier about
supersonic shock waves forming on the
airplane as you start going fast. Um
what Chuck Yeager discovered is that the
elevator, like in a traditional Cessna
that horizontal stabilizer does not
move. So, the elevator at the back
moves, but the horiz- but it but this
part stays fixed. That shock wave that
would form right here would actually
blank the air back to the elevator, and
they wouldn't have any pitch control.
So, when they talk about this thing
called Mach tuck, which was a scary
scary thing that happened to a lot of
World War fighter pilots when they got
into a dive
um they would start forming shock waves
on the airplane. They didn't have the
elevator authority to pull up, and so
they would actually nose dive all the
way in cuz they go faster and faster and
faster heading down. The answer was,
rather than the back end of this thing
maneuvering, the entire surface moves.
So, as a fighter pilot, especially when
you got people walking underneath the
airplane because their maintainers are
working on things, you always always
always you show them your hands because
if you tap that stick, again, the stick
is not directly connected just like it
is. The stick is connected to a
computer. The computer votes and allows
things to happen. It then commands a
4,000 hydraulic PSI system to deflect
basically this big old wing. You can
actually take a guy's head off um with
the flight control surfaces. So, you
always always show your hands whenever
you have people walking underneath the
airplane for that. So, it's got a very
very advanced flight control system on
board. We'll talk through a little bit
about what advantages that kind of gives
you.
Last piece I'll give you is the engines
at the back, um
which are a thing of beauty. I was a
propulsion guy, aeronautics engineer
kind of thing.
Um
it's almost like modern art masterpiece
to me. Um
those engines uh are have the ability to
call what's called thrust vectoring.
They'll swing up and they'll swing down.
Uh where would you want to use that? Why
does he Why do the engines have thrust
vectoring?
You've answered a lot, Meg.
You're smart though. You know what's
going on. Go ahead. Uh very low speeds.
Very low speeds. Outstanding, yep.
Where's it Where's another regime?
Think of the flight envelope of the
airplane.
What if
Yeah, very high altitude.
Very high altitude. So, so why high
altitudes?
Uh little lift from the wings or the
wings could be Yep. Yeah, yeah. Density
goes way down as you go up in altitude.
So, if I deflect this I mean, I have to
get more deflection to move that air to
be able to move the airplane if I'm
relying just on the aero surfaces alone.
The way I get around that is I put two
35,000 thrust pound engines, if you
will, uh on board the airplane. And just
like a fire hose, if I grab a fire hose
and I move it, you would feel that
torque on your body. The same thing here
uh with with the thrust vectoring on the
back. So, with just the movement of my
hand, I can deflect 70,000 lbs of thrust
um way at the back end of the airplane.
So, we talked about center of gravity
being right about here. So, that moment
arm of that thrust force is all the way
back here, and I can deflect that up.
And at very very low speeds where the
flight control surfaces might not be
doing well I can still move the airplane
just by using the the thrust alone. At
high altitude where I don't have a lot
of density, same thing. I can maneuver
the airplane just by using the thrust
alone. So, where that helps you, cuz
again, this is a dog fighter.
Um
here's what happens, and you'll you'll
see this from time to time. So, I'll do
this with the side look. When I get to
high angle of attack, so the wind is
coming like this and it's hitting the
bottom surface of the airplane um I
don't have the ability to really
maneuver a lot because sometimes some
aero surfaces are blanked by just the
the size of that fuselage coming right
out into the wing. So, I I cheat, if you
will, by using the engines to get that
final little pitch rate. We'll see later
on in the Raptor demo video where the
airplane will go It's called a high
alpha loop, high angle of attack loop.
It'll go vertical
um and rather than doing like a loop
where you see it prescribe this whole
path over here, the airplane will go
vertical. I'll engage the thrust
vectoring, and it'll pivot. So, the
velocity vector is still heading
straight up, so the airplane is still
moving up, but it kind of does this
gymnastics thing where I've now turned
the airplane using thrust vectoring even
though the airplane is still heading
straight up. It's wacky.
It's totally cool. All right.
All right, let's talk through a couple
other things.
Okay, so that's the flight controls. How
are we doing timeline? Okay, we're
looking pretty good.
Okay.
Anyone recognize the cockpit on uh your
left?
F-15. F-15? Yeah, outstanding. Good.
This is my very first airplane. I didn't
know any better, right? I sat down and
said, "Wow, what a cool cockpit. Look at
all these cool stuff, buttons everywhere
and switches all over the place." Um
this is an airplane of the '70s. Uh
designed when uh Richard Nixon, Jimmy
Carter, that kind of era, if you will.
Uh
very very first intro to solid-state
electronics. Really wasn't fully fleshed
out at this stage. Um this airplane had
a hydromechanical system, which meant
that just like in this airplane where
there were cables and pulleys, um the
similar kind of flight control system in
it there. Um this picture is the
Raptor's cockpit on the inside. Some
pretty dramatic differences between the
two. So, again, just call them out. What
What What do you see?
Glass cockpit. Glass cockpit. Where does
that help you?
Glass cockpit.
Go ahead. You're doing well. It's
Multi-display. What's up? You can be
multi-display. You can change it to
Oh, yeah. It's great. You can see these
new digital cockpit uh Mercedes-Benzes
and BMWs or whatever where like in the
old days you just had, you know, speed
and tach, if you will. Now, you can
configure it however you want. Um now,
these become the moment you start
putting that in there No, got it. Yeah,
the moment you start doing stuff like
that, um you start creating a software
airplane, which gives you a lot of
flexibility and a danger, right? We'll
talk about that one a little bit later
on. What else do you see?
Flight controls-wise, since we're
talking mainly about flight controls
today.
Side stick. Side stick. Yeah. So
right there
is the control stick in an F-15. It sits
directly between your knees.
Um in a Raptor
that is your control stick. It's on the
side.
Why would you ever want to put something
like that on the side? Go ahead.
I can't use I can't move my head.
That's part of it. That helps. And
there's actually you can't see it here.
It's partly there, but kind of this
little section here It's a fold-out
armrest. So, your wrist is on the stick.
Your your elbow is, if you will, it's
resting on an armrest. So, it gives you
a lot of leverage from there. Um that's
one reason. What's couple other reasons
why you'd want to go side stick versus
center stick? Your legs get in the way
on the center stick.
Legs get in the way. That's a big deal.
Um because in this airplane
you actually got got pretty good after a
while flying it where if you really need
to maneuver the stick, you'd kind of do
the leg up and kind of move over that
way to get everything out of the way. Um
the other side about it, too, it might
not be quite so obvious, but you see how
that stick That's about where your eye
height would be. Um you see how that
stick kind of gets in the way of seeing
some of the instruments?
So, it it's just sitting right there,
right? In a side stick, um that's
completely off to the side, and all of
this real estate is completely open.
Um the other thing I'll give you again,
just for sake of time,
uh it's it's a little bit of a thought
change.
Um when you have a center stick
it's like when you're driving a car
and when you're at parking, you know,
you're trying to park your car, you want
to be able to maneuver that wheel around
a lot. Uh but when you're at highway
speeds, if you were to take the wheel
and maneuver it that much again, you're
going to roll the car. Um so in a center
stick you move the stick around to be
able to deflect the flight control
surfaces. There's a physical
displacement of the stick to make that
happen. On a side stick, that stick,
initially when they first put it in, um
did not move at all. So, imagine if you
were in your car when you wanted to
steer, and rather than the wheel
actually moving, you just put pressure
on the wheel itself, and that was enough
to transmit to the computer in the car
to turn the wheels.
Uh that was a problem initially,
uh which we can talk about after the
presentation. That's a little bit of a
sidebar discussion. This is a human
factors thing. It's a side stick.
Initially, it didn't move. Eventually,
they decided I'll put in some
deflection, so I can go a half inch
left, a half inch right, about a quarter
inch forward because normally uh you
know, I go about a half inch back
because normally I really want to get
the nose going this way. Um if I had
that much deflection forward, I don't
want to fly the airplane this way. So,
you have the ability to do that. Um but
it gives you a little bit of the best of
both worlds. There's some deflection to
give you feedback that you've input
something on the stick, but not so much
deflection that it kind of gets in the
way of everything else you're trying to
do. So, there's limited real estate in a
fighter cockpit.
Uh the last piece I'll give you, and
it's a little bit hard to see here, is
um Um, all those buttons there on the
stick,
uh, you know,
what you have the ability to do, so it's
it's exactly like modern cars car
steering wheels right now. You can
control volume, radio, everything else
like that. You can do it from the
steering wheel. Same thing in a fighter.
It's called hands-on throttle and stick,
HOTAS, and it allows you to control
everything that you would want to do on
the airplane with never having to leave
uh, your your hands from the throttle
and the stick. Uh, the other piece I'll
give you is that in a Raptor, so in a
fighter like this this is your stick,
this is your throttle. In a Raptor,
because the flight control modes can
change so much, this is your right
inceptor and this is your left inceptor.
It's all considered part of the flight
control system.
All right, let's keep going.
So,
um,
just like on your car where if you want
to go to XM radio, you go to media
source or whatever and go XM satellite
radio. Um, you have buttons because it's
a software driven jet just like we saw
before and I can pull up a flight
control display uh, that shows me the
position of all my flight control
surfaces. Again,
um, the pilot is way forward on the
front end of this airplane. As I deflect
things, sometimes I can't actually see
them.
And so initially this was a flight test
display. So but I don't have to do the
old poltergeist thing and try to rotate
all the way around to be able to see to
the back end of the airplane to see if
the elevator's moving.
Uh, I basically instrument everything
and I can see it here. Now, some of the
human factor stuff that's kind of cool
with how they did this,
so this right here,
so again, this tells you at the top uh,
rudder deflection surfaces, ailerons,
where the horizontal stabilizers are at,
how the engines are doing. This is a
little weird. I don't I don't really
like how they did this one, but this is
the leading edge flaps, LE flaps or
leading edge flaps, so it just shows you
how far they're deflected, dug in, dug
down. Um, on the lower left-hand corner
it shows you center of gravity.
So there's limits.
Uh, just like what you you know, what
you would normally do on flight planning
for your Cessna. Hey, I can only put
this much fuel with this much passengers
and I got to be within this limit for
takeoff for landing and everything else.
Uh, the airplane tells you that. Now
what's cool about some of the things
they've done in Raptor is that if it's
out of limits, again, it doesn't expect
you to get out the piece of paper with
the whiz wheel and the E6B. It just
changes color and it goes red and it
gives you a warning, right? And it says,
"Hey idiot, um, you are beyond the aft
center of gravity. Um, no gauge tells
you it's just having a hard time seeing
where all the fuel is and everything
else. That's a different story. But it
tells you where what percentage of mean
aerodynamic cord that you're sitting at
um, and it's able to adjust stuff
around. So,
I'll give that to you because what this
allows is uh, oh by the way, the last
part here is flight control. So in other
words, this tells you where you've moved
your stick and it tells you trim. So you
know where the trim is set and also
tells you where the stick is set. So you
know your inputs that kind of go through
there. When you have a software driven
machine, you can customize things and
make it very simple.
Uh, you guys have seen that terrible
terrible awful movie Top Gun, right?
It's just awful, right? So that scene
where Maverick loses his engines and
they go through this engine one is out,
engine two is out and they go on this
flat spin to sea, which is a bunch of
BS. When you're in a spin, you don't
translate over the ground, you fall
straight down. So, this whole flying out
to sea thing is ridiculous. Doesn't
happen that way. Um,
in if you don't have a software driven
airplane when you lose engines like
that, then you've got to go through this
whole It's like in a for instance in the
Cessna, if you lose a motor, lose the
motor,
uh, what do you got to do, right?
Establish your glide, get everything set
up, check to see am I left, right, or
both on the fuel source, what's my
whatever, blah blah blah and everything
else. Um, in the Raptor, it's the most
awesome thing possible. You literally do
nothing.
You sit there and the computer goes,
"Oh, you've lost a motor. I've noticed
that you have a problem. Let me see if I
can help you." And it will restart the
motor for you if it can, right? If it if
it can't restart the motor, chances are
it ain't going to restart and you can
just leave it shut down if you will. Um,
it allows some neat human factor designs
because in this airplane in the Raptor,
believe it or not, when you're flying
the Raptor, you're not
thinking about flying the Raptor. You're
thinking about employing the Raptor. So
you're trying to find where all of your
wingmates are, where the bad guys are,
etc. etc. Flying is secondary.
Whereas in this plane, flying is
everything.
Um, so they tried to as much as possible
alleviate the pilot from as much burden
of responsibility of thinking about
flying the airplane by doing kind of
neat little tricks like that.
Uh, the other thing I'll give you too
about the flight controls is again, we
talked about how ailerons can go up,
ailerons can come down. Flapperons go
up, they go down. Rudders come out, go
down. On takeoff mode,
I'll show you something kind of cool.
So,
here's the nose look on here. On takeoff
mode without any input from the pilot,
so there's no flap switch in the
cockpit, there's no leading edge There's
nothing. There's nothing like that. Um,
it just knows based on the fact that
you've got the gear handle down and that
you're on the ground and it senses the
weight on wheels, it thinks this guy
wants to take off. So, the rudders will
both deflect inward. Why would you do
that?
Go on. Is it a good time to
um,
sort of rev up to the um, thrust level
that would allow takeoff so that you use
a shorter runway? So, um,
not quite. Um,
there is a tie between the flight
controls though. So in other words, if I
take the rudders and I tow them both in,
so both rudders are deflected in,
what does that do from an aerodynamic
standpoint?
Which way is the nose going to go if
these rudders are deflected in?
Up, right? So it makes it easier to
rotate the airplane on takeoff because
the rudders are deflecting in. Both of
them go in, right? Uh, the other part
about it too is,
so we talked about this. You You guys
ever see like a competition aerobatic
like one of those extra 300 kind of
airplanes? See how the aileron runs the
entire length of the whole wing? So that
the pilot all they got to do is just tap
the wing and the airplane is going to do
corkscrews and spirals. On a Raptor,
that's part of the reason why the
aileron and the flapperon can move
together as one surface. And so the
leading edge flaps will dig in, the
trailing aileron and the trailing edge
flap, that will dig in as well. So, on
takeoff
with no input from the pilot,
whereas the wing normally would look
sort of like this with a little bit of
camber on it, on takeoff, the wing looks
like this.
It's kind of cool like when you look at
it from the side.
So if you're looking at it from
directly side on, that leading edge flap
comes down, these come down, that puts
in a whole bunch of camber on the wing
and it generates a lot of lift. So and
again, that's completely independent of
the pilot. The pilot has done nothing
other than just tell it I'm on the
ground because the gear handle is down.
Last Last, what's it What would be What
would be a typical rotation speed? Yeah,
so that's a good question. What do you
guys think?
So I start on the runway. By the way, I
need 8,000 ft of runway. This whole
2,500 ft is not for a Raptor,
unfortunately.
Um, 8,000 ft of runway, but by the time
I actually get ready to pull back on
that stick to rotate, um, how fast do
you think it's going?
I wish.
Well, of course, 150 is a usual usually
so about takeoff weights. By the way,
this airplane is about 34, 35 tons on
takeoff compared to like, you know,
2,500 lbs or whatever.
Um, so it's a very heavy airplane. Uh,
it's got to get a lot of speed to be
able to get that rotation. That's about
150, 160 knots uh, on takeoff, which is
like faster than like the never exceed
speed of the Cessna
uh, as it goes.
Um, but yeah, so the flight controls are
are there to help you. Um, the other
thing I'll show you too is uh, there is
so sailplane guys. Where are my
sailplane guys? Anybody fly sailplanes?
So, on the left
in a sailplane cockpit, you typically
have a lever for the speed brakes,
spoilers, right? So these big surfaces
that pop up on the wing to slow the
airplane down, adjust glide slopes and
those sorts of things.
Um, we talked a little bit earlier about
how the electrical engineer guys want
this thing to be completely stealthy and
whatever else. The last thing you want
to do, based on the discussion we just
had, is I don't want to have a big board
stick up in the middle of this airplane
because that's going to make my radar
reflection go very very large. So they
did something kind of remarkable. They
used the flight control surfaces
themselves as the speed brakes.
So if I need to slow the airplane down,
I hit a little switch on the throttle
and immediately what happens is
uh, the leading edge flaps will come
down a bit, the ailerons will both go
up.
Um, the rudders will go out, so they'll
both tow out. Um, and it's it's using
that to help slow the airplane kind of
down. It's actually quite effective
uh, which is pretty cool.
All right, couple other things we'll go
through.
Landing mode.
Pilot's done nothing. Touchdown.
Throttles are back.
Gear handle's down.
And all of this stuff happens here. Let
me get this zoomed in here.
So, that's the aileron. It's up. Holy
crap, the other one's up, too.
Um, the flapperon goes up on either
side. Um, the rudders, you can see how
they're both kind of kind of towing in
there a little bit. Um, the reason it's
doing that is it's trying to transfer
all of that weight from the wings and
put it into the gear. So it's trying to
kill all of the lift on the wings and
transfer that to the landing gear so
that you have the maximum traction on
the wheels as you hit the brakes as you
slow down.
Also on
uh, refueling,
so when you go air refueling, there's a
little switch
uh, that you open in the jet, that opens
up this door, that tells the jet that
I'm getting ready to refuel while I'm
airborne. When it does that, it says,
"This guy isn't trying to dog fight the
airplane anymore. They're trying to get
gas, so therefore I don't need all the
full roll capability and everything else
and really what I really want is an
airplane that's really responsive with
its lift." And so again, no input from
the pilot, but the leading edge flaps
will deploy down, the trailing edge
flaps and the ailerons will also deploy
down. Again, they're trying to create
camber on that wing. This is all digital
flight controls. No input from the pilot
whatsoever. What would a typical
airspeed be when doing this air
refueling? Uh this is about Oops, I'm
sorry. Let me go back one here.
This is about uh about 300 300 knots or
so something like that. Um you got to be
able to fly So, for a Raptor, that's
kind of slow. Um for the tanker
airplane, that's somewhat fast. Um so,
you're trying to find that marriage
where both airplanes have good flying
qualities so that one's not about to
stall and the other one's in full power
trying to catch up to them.
By the way, the most unnatural act I've
ever done as a fighter pilot is to
connect up my airplane to another
airplane. I just never got used to it. I
can do it just fine, but the whole
notion of this big boom connecting my
airplane to a big airliner was just
really strange and weird to me. Never
got used to it.
Okay, some of the limiters. So,
in an F-15 cuz we talked to that a
little bit earlier. F-15 can you can get
up to 500 600 miles an hour. You can
take both hands on the stick. You can
pull that stick all the way back and you
will rip the wings off the airplane. And
you will turn it into a big ball of
metal cascading down to the ground
because you have over-G'd the airplane.
Um again, that awful terrible movie Top
Gun in which Tom Cruise departs the
airplane and gets into a spin. Uh again,
you've exceeded some capability of the
airplane and the airplane departs
controlled flight and gets into some
type of uncontrolled situation. On a
Raptor, there used to be in the pilot
operating manual a little blurb that
said, quote, "You can maneuver this
airplane with quote reckless abandon um
and you will not over-G the airplane.
You will not depart the airplane from
controlled flight." They did a
spectacular
job uh allowing this airplane to get
right to the edge of performance but not
going over the top. So, one of the neat
things that they did,
airplanes in a left-hand turn. Look at
that aileron. It's up.
Look at that aileron. It's up.
What the crap is going on there?
And if you know this one, you really do
get the model.
Cuz I didn't know this for a long time.
So, again, just for sake of time cuz I
know we got guys coming in afterwards,
center of gravity
of the airplane sits right here.
Um in your engineering classes, you
always talk about forces acting on the
center of gravity and you kind of take
this whole airplane and you model it
down to a point mass. And you say that's
what's that's you know, for for sake of
all the the you know, sum of forces
analysis. Well, in real life, uh this
airplane's about 43 ft wide. Um yeah,
you can sum the forces through there,
but there's forces acting all over this
airplane at different spots. Think about
here on the wingtip. Um I put G on the
airplane and this wingtip, it's almost
like the wings want to bend up right as
I'm coming down. So, you put a lot of
stress out on the wingtips. So, their
answer, quite ingeniously, was to
deflect the ailerons down when you're at
high maneuvering. The way you know
you're at high maneuvering is you can
kind of see these little wispies forming
off the wingtips. So, you are creating
low pressure. That's another one, too.
You can see the clouds forming on the
front edge of the wing. Low pressure um
causes that air to condense and so you
make clouds. So, you know the airplane's
really maneuvering up. And in answer to
reduce stress at the wingtips, was to
deflect the ailerons up. What happens to
the lift out at the wingtips with the
ailerons up?
Goes down, right? So, it helps to kind
of
push those wings back down again. So,
you're not trying to overstress the
airplane. Um there are limiters uh like
this all over the airplane such that you
won't over-G the airplane. You can't um
you know, literally, you can do anything
you want to this airplane. That's what
I'm telling you. It's easier to fly a
Raptor than it is to fly a Cessna
because you really have to pay attention
to what you're doing in a Cessna. In a
Raptor, I could put my kid in there and
he can do this all day at whatever speed
and nothing bad will happen to the
airplane. It's really quite spectacular
how they did that.
Uh the other part I'll give you here is
some of the command systems. So, if I'm
in a dogfight and I'm trying to shoot
the other guy, I'm going against a
maneuvering target. And so, the flight
controls transfer over to what's called
a G command system. So, if I'm
maneuvering at 4 Gs and I let go of the
stick, the airplane will stay at 4 Gs.
And if I see that the target's
maneuvering, I need to go to 6 Gs or 7
Gs, I'll put that in and the airplane
will keep that. So, in other words,
again, it's a vote, right? I'm not
physically connected to anything. I talk
to the computer and I say I want 6 Gs
and the airplane does all types of black
magic and sorcery behind me. And lo and
behold, the airplane gets to 6 to 7 Gs.
Um that really matters when you're in a
high maneuvering kind of situation. So,
it goes G command. Um when you're
slower, i.e., on landing, and I want to
put that flight path marker right on
that edge of the runway cuz that's where
I want to touch down right at the
1,000-ft markers, uh
then in that scenario, I'm not really
cared so much about G command. I care
about pitch rate. And so, it transitions
over to a pitch rate command. And if I
put no input on the stick, it says zero
pitch rate. Again, black magic and
sorcery will happen behind me. The
flight controls will do whatever they
need to do to make sure that my pitch
rate stays at zero. So, it transitions
from one type of flight control system
to the other. No pilot input whatsoever.
It's just based off of flight flight
command system.
All right. So, let's talk through a
couple of the implications of that and
then we'll go to questions at the end.
Um
Can you do the flight control video
Raptor at the top? It's about a minute.
And then
bring it up to full screen and hit
pause.
Thank you.
Okay, this one is uh full screen and
pause. Okay. And can you go back to the
beginning on it real quick?
Okay.
So, video in cockpit facing display
screens is a big no-no uh because you
could see stuff. So, we won't even
bother with that. Uh but what they did,
this is the Raptor flight demonstration
team. This is out of Langley Air Force
Base, Virginia. They mounted a camera in
the cockpit kind of facing aft. What I
love about this is again, you can see
real quick kind of what's going on with
the airplane. So, again, the leading
edge slats, there's no input from the
pilot other than just maneuvering.
They'll deploy wherever they need to.
You'll see the horizontal stabilators
and if you're close, you can actually
see what the ailerons are doing and what
the flaperons are doing. Um a neat trick
and we'll see this as they go into this
high-G demo.
Um you guys know about Have you This
gets a little bit advanced, but a thing
called static margin,
uh which is a stability thing about this
airplane. Again, this airplane in its
bare airframe configuration, no
hydraulics, no computers, nothing on
board the airplane, totally unstable. Um
what keeps it stable is the computer
itself. Um what you'll see is you'll see
this maneuver where he'll go into a G
turn and you'll see all those clouds
forming on the back end of the airplane.
Pay attention to what the leading edge
flaps are doing. They're digging in. The
horizontal stabilators, um you'll see
them initially move to get the turn
going, but then once established in the
turn, um the way it's controlling things
is it's moving around the uh aerodynamic
center and the the center of gravity.
It's doing that by dorking around a bit
with the lift on the wing and it's doing
that by deflecting the leading edge
flaps. So, that flight control surface
display I showed you earlier, the
horizontal stabilators will be
completely streamlined. And all of the
maneuvering is coming from the wing
itself, which is pretty amazing.
The next video? No, no, go go to flight
controls. We'll watch that.
I'll go back. Okay. Yep. And then we'll
just kind of watch as it goes through.
This time without the funky club music,
I guess hopefully.
Incidentally, watch flight controls in
the back.
Oh man, you need You need somebody
better here.
I know, totally.
So, at that speed again, it's a G
command system. Pilot is commanding a
certain G rate and minor deflections are
happening all the way here back along
the back edge of the airplane. Pilot has
no input on that. The system is doing
everything possible to command that G
that the pilot has asked for.
You'll see one other maneuver here.
Pause for a second.
So, what this maneuver is is and again,
right, slow speed, um airplane's going
straight up and what they're trying to
do is basically pitch forward completely
um and get the airplane So, it's almost
like you're flying an L. Like you're
going straight up and then you want to
pitch forward and then accelerate out
horizontally that way. Um the way it
gets that is through that that thrust
vector and that happens. But as that
maneuver happens, again, all the pilot
is doing is just doing a direct push
forward on the stick. Watch what happens
to all the flight controls in the back
of the airplane to keep that airplane
going exactly where the air pilot wants
it to. Play.
So, you'll see huge deflections out of
that horizontal stabilator. It's kind of
neat. You can keep playing.
So, what you're seeing there is um from
the outside of the airplane, we'll see
this more on the demo, is um the
airplane is essentially pirouetting in
the sky. So, it's falling straight down,
but it's very controllable. It's flying
at speeds about 60 to 65 mph, um but
very very controllable. And you'll see
every bit of flight control surface on
the back end of this airplane deflecting
to do what it needs to do. So, don't
think of it in terms of aileron,
elevator. It's a little bit fluid when
it comes to a Raptor. It's stuff stuff
happens back there.
Touch and go video? Okay, so this shows
a little bit of Yeah, you can go ahead
and play that.
And hit pause for a second. We'll just
do the setup.
Okay. So very quick, the setup for this
video
this is the downside of a digital flight
control system
cuz on this airplane again, it's it's
pure cables, pulleys, right? It's ratios
and gears and stuff like that, right?
This airplane, it's software code. It's
zeros and ones.
And you better get it right. And
everything is interconnected. We talked
about how moving the gear handle tells
the flight control system something
different. If I open the air refueling
door, it tells the flight control
something different. In this case, the
power setting of the airplane
tells the airplane something different.
This guy, one of my good friends, test
pilot, outstanding guy, so don't think
of this as he's a bad pilot. He's not.
He's awesome. But the jet believed
something that wasn't really true
because there was an error in how the
software was coded. And you'll see the
first approach he'll do an approach
he'll take off again at what's called
military power, so they're not using
afterburner.
And the airplane behaves just fine.
The next time around he goes around
using afterburner power, so you'll see
fire come out of the back end of the
airplane. And that changes something in
the flight system for the engines which
tells the flight control computer a
different condition. And what ended up
happening is that the gains, if you
will, of the stick were completely off.
So again, this would be like if you were
on the highway speed and that same wheel
deflection you would use to park your
car in your garage, now that little
deflection of your wheel makes that same
turn of the tires up front. So you get
into what's called a pilot induced
oscillation PIO, which basically says
you're out of phase with the airplane.
If I'm driving my car and I turn the
steering wheel right, the car's going
left. As it's going left, I'm trying to
correct it I go right. Now the thing
goes right. And so you get out of phase
with the airplane. And you'll see what
happens. Go ahead and play.
By the way, you see all the flight
control surfaces deflecting in the back?
This is now in a pitch rate system, so
he's just trying to land the airplane.
The back of the airplane does whatever
it needs to do to keep that flight path
marker exactly where it needs to go.
And again, all the flight control
surfaces deflected military power cuz
the engines are are black, if you will,
on this one. On the next time around,
you'll see him maneuver with
afterburner. And you'll see him get into
this pitch induced oscillation.
That's the chase airplane, by the way.
It's an F-16 that follows him around.
So same thing getting set up to land.
The camera goes out of focus here for a
second, comes back in.
Again, just notice everything that's
happening on the back end of this
airplane to keep that pitch rate where
the pilot has commanded it to.
Two things will happen here. He selects
afterburner and he raises the gear. That
changes the flight control laws. And the
gains were not set correctly.
There's the afterburner. And now you see
where he's out of phase with the
airplane.
And he's doing everything to keep the
airplane from hitting the ground. And
can't can't avoid it.
He's okay.
But the airplane was fairly well scraped
up, you can imagine.
So it's it's just a danger, right? The
digital flight controls allow a lot of
flexibility and creativity.
There used to be a term it's only
software, you know, we can figure it
out. Not true when you're dealing with
you know, vehicles like this where small
changes in software code can have
dramatic implications on the ability of
the airplane. So takes
amazing amount of uh
demo? Yep, you can go ahead and do
Raptor demo. And with that we can go
questions cuz I'm a little bit over. Uh
No, it's fine. Okay.
So we we can play this full speed or
full full screen, if you will.
You want to take questions while it's
running?
Yeah. Yeah, so this is from another good
buddy of mine, guy named Zeke Skalicky,
who was the Raptor demo pilot,
outstanding guy.
Um but this is the Raptor demo, if
you've ever seen it. So we'll we'll take
some questions while this is going. Go
ahead.
So on F-22 Yeah, greater than one to
one. So the airplane about 63, 64,000 lb
normally it's on takeoff.
The thrust coming out the back is 70,000
lb. So on a nice cold day, like if
you're close enough to sea level, you
will actually go faster than the speed
of sound while you're climbing up. Which
is cool.
Yeah, yeah, but please
thrust vectoring while taking off?
I Let's try to
Oh yeah, try to repeat the question if
you can. Oh, sorry. Cuz he's not miked.
So the question was Well one, the
question was is thrust to weight ratio.
It's greater than one to one, a little
bit greater than one to one on takeoff.
By the way, watch this maneuver here
real quick. So that's the thrust
vectoring
kind of kicking in to really get the
airplane. So initially that's the flight
control surfaces. And then as things
slow down, the thrust vectoring kicks in
to basically turn the airplane into a
flat plate.
Second question was about the thrust
vectoring on takeoff. So it'll put in a
little bit up, not much, just a little
bit up just to help the nose rotate.
Just just a tad.
This is that high angle of attack kind
of maneuver, if you will.
Keep going. It's all good questions.
Yeah. You said all the software's
written so basically so the plane can't
damage itself. So this is the pilot
becoming a limiter? Yes. You in
situations where it can hurt you? Yeah,
very much so. In fact, we've kind of
achieved that spot now where the pilot
very much is limiting the performance of
the airplane itself cuz the airplane can
do so much more. What you So this is
what's called a fifth generation
fighter. First generation was like an
old Korean War
like F-86 kind of airplane. And then
successively through the generations,
you arrive at this fifth generation,
which to me is the pinnacle of what you
could get with a human and an airplane
together. Sixth generation is going to
involve teaming this airplane with
unmanned airplanes. And the unmanned
airplanes are going to have a lot more
capability from a maneuvering standpoint
because they don't have the limitation
of the pilot and all the life support
systems that come with it and everything
else. So all that weight you would
normally devote to that, you can get
away with putting other stuff in there.
When I was telling you it flies about
the same speed as like a Cessna,
I mean this is those types of maneuvers
there where you can get away with that.
Again, watch the flight control surfaces
in the back and what's going on.
Later on they'll do a pass where he'll
open up the doors and you can see the
main weapon bay, which is underneath the
airplane belly. And then you'll see the
side weapon bay doors. So you can kind
of see kind of where all the weapons are
carried inside the airplane. Again, a
huge center of gravity challenge.
Incidentally, so so here's a maneuver
there so you can see the doors open.
One thing I didn't really tell you about
is so in that situation cuz you know,
missiles weigh a couple hundred pounds a
piece or so. Some of the bombs are about
a thousand pounds a piece. When you lose
all that weight immediately, it's
literally like dropping a car off the
front end of the airplane. The way that
it fixes that center of gravity issue is
by changing fuel inside the airplane. So
it sloshes fuel forward or back to keep
the center of gravity again completely
pilot There's no fuel control panel
where I go, well, move this and click
this and whatever. It does it all
completely automatically. Go ahead.
Yeah.
The sensors that you can use? So all of
the fuel tanks are are instrumented.
So you know the status of fuel in terms
of where things are set up.
It you tell it what Actually, it has the
ability to know what's on the airplane.
So when you load a missile, it goes, oh,
it's this type of missile. And it goes
it weighs this much. And it knows the
mass properties of it. And so it sets it
up from there.
So
it actually identifies that all by
itself.
So like in a in a Cirrus, you have to go
you have to actually pull up a screen on
the Cirrus and go, my passenger weighs
this and I've got this baggage on board.
And and then it gives you the picture of
where the center of gravity is. Um this
thing because it's all digital, the
missile has a little connector rod that
connects in and it says, behold, I'm a
missile.
Oh, the pilot weight doesn't matter
because they they they spec it well
it matters, but for a different reason.
It matters for the ejection seat
predominantly. Because the ejection seat
you know, I think it's like 135 lb is
the light It's something like that. 115,
135 to like 220 or something. It's
something around that spot.
So to be able to be within the safe
envelope of the ejection seat, that's
where the weight of the pilot matters.
But they they spec the center of gravity
such that so long as
really anyone can sit up front and
you're not going to throw off the CG of
the airplane. Even though you're way far
forward of the of the CG and there there
there there's a moment arm there.
But between everything else in the
cockpit, I mean that ejection seat is
ridiculously heavy. And all the avionics
that sit up front, the radars up front.
I mean all these things that sit up
there have far more of a contribution to
the center of gravity than you do.
Unless you're like Shaq or something
like that. But go ahead.
Is it on the either flight cockpit or on
the helmet screen?
So in this airplane, not yet. That's
coming along soon. Some of the older
airplanes, believe it or not, have that.
Like the F-15 that I flew, you had a
special helmet that had all of the
information displayed on the visor
itself.
So in addition to that hands-on throttle
and stick, so I don't have to take my
hands off of anything to touch anything
in the cockpit. I also don't have to
look in the cockpit to see altitude,
airspeed, heading. It's it's all
displayed to me
up front. This airplane eventually will
get that. It it didn't make the This is
a programmatic discussion now, right?
They They only had so many dollars to
spend and they said this airplane is so
awesome that it shouldn't need a helmet
mounted display system because it should
be able to see uh all the bad guys from
far enough away and not be a problem.
We fielded the airplane that way and
every pilot So, the first batch of
pilots, they all transitioned from
airplanes that had that helmet mounted
system and they came to this airplane
where it didn't have it and they were
pissed. They're like, "We We got to have
that back." Right? So, that's kind of
where a lot of the efforts now are going
to modernize the airplane a bit.
What else? Good questions. Good. Yeah.
Yeah, why do they still need humans in
the cockpit? Why not just go for
unmanned systems?
It is It is the great debate of the
fighter community right now and you're
really touching on something really
really deep. Um
The best answer so far is that the
greatest I mean, we talked a lot about
the hardware and the systems on board
the airplane. Really, the greatest piece
of capability on the airplane is the
mind of the person flying
uh up front. If it's a very dynamic and
changing environment, uh to be able to
tell a machine to be able to incorporate
all those inputs and make the right
decisions based on that, kind of hard to
do right now. I'm not saying we're not
going to get there. Just right now it's
it's difficult. Where Where we use
unmanned systems a lot now is like in
surveillance
uh missions where you can just launch
the thing and it's got a pre-programmed
navigation and it knows what it needs to
do and it can set things up. Um those
are
somewhat bounded problems. Probably the
best way to to describe it where you
could use an unmanned system for that.
Where it gets difficult is in combat
situation, it's it's extremely dynamic.
It's It's Battle Royale, WWF, mosh pit,
any possible chaotic situation you can
put. That's kind of what it looks like.
Um and so, having a human mind attached
in that environment to be able to adapt
and do what the mind does better than a
machine does at least right now. That's
the main argument to keep humans in the
system.
For now. Right?
Yeah.
Yeah, it is. Um
Yeah, the question is is that if you
operate these things remotely, so even
if you had so, you know, classic
example, we'll use Sully Sullenberger,
all right, as a cuz we talked about
Sully in the previous one. Uh you take
off out of LaGuardia, you lose both
engines. Um if you could have a remote
pilot sitting somewhere else that could
take over and decide land on the Hudson
because a machine most likely wouldn't
have made that choice.
Um is there a time lag issue? The answer
is 100% yes.
Um there is a time lag issue between uh
getting that information display down,
make the input, that input goes back up
and comes back over. Um a thing we've
done at test pilot school is, remember
we showed earlier that flight path
marker?
Uh where as a pilot you put the flight
path marker and that's exactly where
your airplane's going to go. If there's
a time lag, that will actually mess you
up because there's some second or two
delay between what you're seeing and
what the airplane's actually going. At
test pilot school, they actually built a
flight test a flight path marker that
accounts for that time delay. If it
knows that time delay, it'll actually
account for it. So, you could fly the
airplane remotely
um even with the time lag and still be
able to do very high gain tasks like
land the airplane for instance where
things are changing very rapidly. So,
it's it's a new science, not fully
fleshed out yet, but the but the proof
of concept has been demonstrated to
control an airplane remotely
um even with the time lag.
Who really cares about that right now?
Are the airlines.
Because uh to be very frank, uh the
pilots tend to be a pain in the butt for
an airline company.
Um and if you can remove the pilots and
just have a remote operating system or
even an autonomous system, uh to the
from a business standpoint, the company
really likes that from an aviation
standpoint. It triggers all types of
discussions in a lot of other issues.
Um but that's one question. Good. Let me
jump Let me jump in for a minute with
that. I think actually, to me, one of
the holy grails of GA safety would be to
have uh
a
uh
human co-pilot perhaps, you know, on the
ground. So, if you had that kind of
telemetry that you have in a in a drone,
uh you know, human somewhere else could
say, you know, "You're running a little
short on fuel." Or you forgot to change
tanks. All the things that a human
uh co-pilot could do right in the
cockpit, you know, most of that safety,
running checklist could be probably
enhanced Yep. Uh remotely. So, that
would be a great add to a Cessna or a
Piper even. And you see a little bit now
in some of the more advanced airplanes
like we talked a little bit about if I
have an engine problem in the Raptor, I
literally do nothing. I just sit there
and stare at the clouds and go, "Wow,
what a lovely day." And the computer
fixes it for me. Right? Um there are
other scenarios where the jet will tell
me, "Hey, you've got a generator
problem." and then immediately pull up
the checklist for the generator failure
to allow me to fix it. So, you see some
basic automation right now kind of
already in play. Couple other questions,
I know we're running short. Good.
I'm good. Yeah.
Yeah, if it's a uh so, it's We have two
terms. One's called beyond visual range,
which means I can't see the other guy
with my eyes, um but my sensors can see
him. Um and if I'm shooting missiles
long distance like that, I I don't lose
any seat of the pants by being remotely.
It's like a video game. Like literally,
it's it's exactly like a video game. Um
if it's a maneuvering environment where
I see the guy and we're in a dog fight,
then yeah, you lose a lot, right? In
terms of seat of the pants, eyeball,
just things that are hard to to
automate. So, it's
half and half, right? In a drone
scenario, I mean,
what would a drone dog fight? I don't
know. It's a good question. I'm not
really sure.
Good.
You could. Um but then I have to have
some way to represent the physical
environment that the drone is seeing. I
got to be able to represent that to the
guy on the simulator on the ground. I I
have to be able to kind of relay that
real time. Um it matters. So,
uh
Who Who plays sports? Right? Guys, you
know, any I mean, whenever you're
playing sports, you got an opponent. Uh
you get if you play a lot like if it's
racquetball or football or something
like that, you get very good at looking
at your opponent and being able to see
micro movements before the actual big
movement happens so that you know, "Oh,
they're about to swing this way." Or
they're going to throw this way. So, you
can read your opponent and make a
decision about what's about to happen a
second or two from now. In a fighter
jet, the exact same thing. If I'm
fighting a guy and I see a control
surface deflection even before the
airplane has gone, I know person's going
this way.
I can position myself to be there before
they arrive.
I would need some way to represent that
if I'm in a simulator on the ground and
it would have to be kind of transparent
to the guy in the simulator
what what that feels like.
Good.
Lots of good questions. It's good class.
Let me ask actually, where's Who's here
from the flying club?
Uh Sebastian?
Yeah, actually, I wonder if lads, can
you stay another uh 10-15 minutes?
Absolutely. Why don't we have Sebastian
jump in, give his flying club spiel, and
then uh both of them will be up front
for uh questions right afterwards.
Thank you, lads.
No worries.