Carrier landing aid

It is simply the next step - moving the autonomous landing system from drones to manned aircraft.
Within 5-7 years manually flown carrier landings will be the exception, not the norm.
In the next generation, 15 years, those young pilots will not even be taught manual landings. If the aircraft is damaged such that the auto system is disabled, you slow up to a stall near the carrier and punch out.
The generation after that, 30 years, will be all drone fighters - assuming our Chinese overlords will let us have a carrier.
 
While part of me is very interested in this technology, another part of me bemoans the watering down of the skills that make the coveted "Wings of Gold" mean so much.

So there is a three part thing working here. First it changes the traditional power for glideslope, nose for AOA and makes it a more traditional throttles control speed and stick controls glideslope control scheme.

Second, it allows the computer to change the deflection of the ailerons and trailing edge flaps to make glideslope corrections. This is nothing new. Other jets such as the F-14 and S-3 used Direct Lift Control (DLC) behind the boat, but they had dedicated surfaces whereas the Rhino will use the TEF's and Ailerons.

Third is new HUD symbology that will allow us to "put the thing on the thing" and land, like is possible at the field, whereas currently at the boat the movement of the runway at 30 knots makes your HUD symbology inaccurate.

I'm interested to see how it changes the way the flies, but part of me hopes to do my entire time in the jet flying manual passes...the way the aviators of old did it. Just don't fail my HUD... :)
 
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