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The article discusses the introduction of the AH-64E Guardian attack helicopter to the British Army Air Corps. The AH-64E is a new generation attack helicopter that offers upgrades to its weapon systems, including the AGM-179 Joint Air-to-Ground Missile. It also retains many of the survivability features of its predecessor, the Apache AH1, and has improved agility and integrated networks for enhanced situational awareness. The AH-64E was declared ready for frontline duty after completing Exercise Iron Titan in October 2023. [Extracted from the article]

This article provides an overview of the Dassault Falcon business jet family, with a focus on the Falcon 2000 and Falcon 7X models. The Falcon 2000 was introduced in the 1990s as an upgrade to previous models, offering a larger cabin and increased speed. The Falcon 7X, launched in 2001, boasted a longer range and advanced technology. Dassault has continued to innovate with new models, including the Falcon 6X and plans for the larger Falcon 10X. The article also mentions the Falcon 5X, which encountered engine issues and was subsequently canceled, but Dassault has announced the Falcon 10X as a new project set to enter service in 2027. The Falcon 10X aims to disrupt the larger end of the business jet market with its impressive cabin, range, and the ability to operate into London City Airport. [Extracted from the article]

The guidance and control system (GCS) is an important and indispensable component of hypersonic flight vehicle (HFV), and it can be viewed as a special cyber–physical system (CPS). However, the monitoring of the HFV dynamics is difficult since the inertial navigation equipment can only provides the information of acceleration and angular rate. In this case, the flexible states of HFV are difficult to be measured. This paper proposes a sliding mode observer (SMO) based GCS design method for HFV. With considering the measurement difficulties, the flexible states of HFV are assumed to be unmeasurable. Then a SMO is designed to estimated them. Combined with the actual flight environment of HFV, the measuring devices are assumed to be suffering from disturbance, then the SMO should not only guarantee the estimation error stable, but also reduce the influence of external disturbances. What is worse, the input of HFV is suffering from input delay, which brings more difficulties to the controller design. By state transformation,input delay model of HFV is transformed into a delay free model,then a SMO based robust controller is proposed for HFV based on the stable inversion controller design strategy. By the proposed SMO based controller, the GCS can be constructed for HFV. Numeral simulation are carried on HFV, and simulation results show shat, the designed SMO can realize the monitoring of flexible states of HFV and the designed GCS can get a good tracking performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the application of aviation safety measures and systems might be applied to autonomous vehicle control systems (AVCS) and improve public safety and avoid fatalities. The article discusses the automobile industry's efforts to deliver driverless vehicles to the marketplace, fly-by-wire (FBW) aircraft flight control systems (FCS), and aviation human factors.

This section offers homeland security-related news briefs as of January 1, 2022. The city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands has received three patrol boats that will be used by its police force. Great Britain's Civil Nuclear Constabulary is deploying firearms officers on passenger ferries between England and Europe. The defence ministry of Belgium has confirmed that some of its networks have been hit by a cyber attack.

The article focuses on the technologies being developed for the United Kingdom's Flying Technology Demonstrator aircraft, which will support the Anglo-Japanese-Italian Tempest/Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP). It include digital model-based engineering, digital design, advanced manufacturing and additive materials, with the aim of de-risking the main Tempest program; and preparing the industry and personnel for the future development of GCAP aircraft.

In this article, we face the problem of detecting setpoint attacks in networked control systems. We consider a setup where the reference signal (also known as setpoint) is generated by a control center remotely located with respect to a standard feedback controller. In this scenario, an attacker with sufficient resources can exploit the communication channel to alter the setpoint signal and ultimately affect the tracking performance of the control system. With respect to this problem, we propose a novel distributed control architecture that, taking advantage of peculiar capabilities of the command governor control paradigm, enables the detection of reference attacks. We formally prove that for constrained linear systems such detector exists. Moreover, by limiting the attacker's disclosure resources with superimposed cryptographically secure pseudorandom signals, we show that the absence of advanced stealthy attacks is also ensured. Finally, a solid numerical simulation investigating setpoint attacks on the flight control system of a single-engine fighter is presented to provide tangible evidence of the features of the presented methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

T he McDonnell Douglas DC-10 would be the backbone of Iberia's long-haul network during the 1970s and 1980s, especially to the Caribbean and South America, when many of these routes were still a succession of stops serving a multitude of destinations. Being the second widebody aircraft introduced by Iberia, the DC-10 was somewhat overshadowed by the earlier arrival of the Boeing 747. Iberia's DC-10 fleet was maintained at eight aircraft until March 1994, when ECCSK was transferred to the Venezuelan subsidiary VIASA. 79 WWW.AVIATION NEWS.CO.UK McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30, EC-CSJ Costa de la Luz, climbing away from London/Heathrow in January 1979 wearing the livery introduced by Iberia in 1977 Vernon Murphy/Steve Arthur collection Above: The ceremony to mark the fi rst DC-10-30 for Iberia at Gerona Airport on March 28, 1973. [Extracted from the article]

FARA will be the replacement aircraft for the divested OH58D aircraft within air cavalry squadrons; the cancelled Kiowa Warrior cockpit and sensor upgrade was planned for 368 aircraft. With production continuing at one to two aircraft per month, plans call for 18 V-22s - eight Navy, five Marine Corps, one Air Force and four JGSDF to be delivered in 2021. 14 March / April 2021 O utgoing US President Donald Trump took his last ride on a VH-3D on Jan. 20, having saved VH-92A Presidential replacement helicopter production in Pennsylvania yet having lost the battleground state in pandemic polling. Sikorsky delivered the first IOT&Econfigured CH-53K aircraft to the Marines in October and has five LRIP aircraft in work at Stratford and Bridgeport, Connecticut. [Extracted from the article]

The article informs that North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)'s Ocean 2020 Exercise, led by the Italian Navy, was designed to demonstrate how collaborative autonomy between multi-domain unmanned air, surface and sub-surface vehicles. It mentions about objectives of Ocean 2020 was the improvement of maritime integration of unmanned systems and Intelligence, Surveillance Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance capabilities, as well proving interoperability between heterogeneous systems.

The next generation of aircraft with a large number of effectors will require advanced methods for control allocation (CA) to compute the effectors’ commands needed to follow the desired objective while respecting associated constraints. Currently, the main challenge of the CA is to achieve low enough computation time with a deterministically optimal result for a real-time application. In this paper, at first, we cast the CA as a nonlinear convex programming problem which depicts the desired objective function subject to three-axis moment demands and the limits of effectors’ movement; then we develop a computationally tractable method for real-time application on the CA of the aircraft flight control system. The method can analytically and deterministically give one optimal solution for the CA and prove this optimal solution to be guaranteed within a certainly maximal computation time. Numerical testing results based on Boeing C-17 transport aircraft and Lockheed-Martin tailless fighter models demonstrate that the method is effective in terms of its computational efficiency, accuracy, and reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new scheme for the attitude control of the quadrotor in presence of uncertainties and disturbances is presented. The proposed algorithm is a modified Super Twisting control -MSTW-. The aim of this technique is to solve the main disadvantage of the classical Super Twisting -STW- which is chattering. Moreover, the proposed scheme allows reduced control effort and accurate tracking. The elimination of the chattering phenomena is due to the continuous outputs generated by the MSTW. The finite time convergence and stability analysis of the closed loop system are derived using Lyapunov function techniques. The experimental validation is done to emphasize the good performances of the new scheme in terms of accuracy, robustness, finite-time convergence and chattering elimination with less control effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the introducing of next-generation fighters as the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II. It focuses on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) operations for a pilot to acquire good situational awareness; and also highlights the division of advanced fighters into three distinct groups which consists of a group of new fighters that represent an attempt by advanced aerospace nations like Russia and China.

This paper addresses the issue of reliable feedback control of an uncertain aircraft flight control systems with disturbances via non-fragile sampled-data control approach. In particular, the parameter uncertainties are assumed to be randomly occurring which is described by the Bernoulli distributed sequences. By constructing a suitable Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional together with Wirtinger-based inequality, a new set of sufficient conditions in terms of linear matrix inequalities is obtained to ensure the asymptotic stability and extended dissipativity of the aircraft flight control systems not only when all actuators are operational, but also in case of some actuator failures. Finally, simulation results are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control design technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomous helicopter flight is widely regarded to be a highly challenging control problem. As helicopters are highly unstable and exhibit complicated dynamical behavior, it is particularly difficult to design controllers that achieve high performance over a broad flight regime. While these aircraft are notoriously difficult to control, there are expert human pilots who are nonetheless capable of demonstrating a wide variety of maneuvers, including aerobatic maneuvers at the edge of the helicopter's performance envelope. In this paper, we present algorithms for modeling and control that leverage these demonstrations to build high-performance control systems for autonomous helicopters. More specifically, we detail our experiences with the Stanford Autonomous Helicopter, which is now capable of extreme aerobatic flight meeting or exceeding the performance of our own expert pilot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses several developments and programs related to the combat aircrafts. Topics discussed include the global military transport aircraft market which is expected to display angle digit consistent growth in by 2024; the Asia-Pacific region, which is the most in need of replacing its ageing transport fleet; and the USAF Air Mobility Command that operates 222 C-17 GLOBEMASTER Ills.

In this paper, a constrained control scheme based on model reference adaptive control is investigated for the longitudinal motion of a commercial aircraft with actuator faults and saturation nonlinearities. Actuator faults and constraints are both important factors adversely affecting the stability and performance of flight control systems. An adaptive adjustment law based on Lyapunov function is utilized to adjust the fault-tolerant control law. Both additive and multiplicative faults are considered in the designed controller to deal with the three types of actuator faults: locked in place, loss of effectiveness, and bias. Moreover, different techniques are implemented in the basic and fault-tolerant controller to anti-windup. Proofs for the stability of the two modified controllers which improve the performance of control system operating in the presence of actuator faults and saturations are proposed. Finally, a numerical example of the anti-windup fault-tolerant controller for a commercial aircraft is demonstrated. The stability and performance improvements can be accrued with the presented fault-tolerant control scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the design of an asynchronous dual solver suitable for model predictive control (MPC) applications. The proposed solver relies on a state-of-the-art variance reduction (VR) scheme, previously used in the context of proximal stochastic gradient methods (Prox-SVRG) and on the alternating minimization algorithm (AMA). The resultant algorithm, a stochastic AMA with VR (SVR-AMA), shows geometric convergence (in the expectation) to a suboptimal solution of the MPC problem and, compared to other state-of-the-art dual asynchronous algorithms, allows one to tune the probability of the asynchronous updates to improve the quality of the estimates. Two novel accelerated versions of the Prox-SVRG (and, by duality, of SVR-AMA) are also provided. We apply the proposed algorithm to a specific class of splitting methods, that is, the decomposition along the length of the prediction horizon. Numerical results on the longitudinal control problem of an Airbus passenger aircraft show the benefits that we can gain in terms of computation time when using our proposed solver with an adaptive probability distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate the dynamics and the potential of the control mechanism of a fixed-trim re-entry vehicle with a moving-mass roll control system and provide the theoretical references for engineering practices, the 7 -DOF dynamic model is generated in this paper. Then, the kinetic characteristics and the dynamic coupling between the moving mass and the carrier are studied with the frequency domain analysis to reveal the control m echanism of the flight vehicle control system. M eanw hile, according to the analysis results of the coupling between three channels and the im pact of the actuator param eters on the control au thority, some suggestions on the structure and control system design have been made in this p ap er, which provide the theoretical references for a flight vehicle with a moving-mass roll control system in engineering practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that patrolling over the oceans is defined by the type of aircraft being deployed than the integrated ability of the mission systems. It offers information on the Atlantique ATL-2 is one of the maritime patrol aircraft types that are equipped with Airborne Maritime Situation & Control Syetem (AMASCOS) suites

Abstract This work investigates the problem of robust dissipative analysis for aircraft flight control systems via non-fragile sampled-data control approach. The uncertainties occurring in the system parameter is assumed to be random and satisfy the Bernoulli distribution. The main objective of this work is to design a non-fragile sampled-data controller such that the resulting closed-loop system is robustly stochastically stable and strictly (Q , S , R) - α -dissipative. By constructing a suitable augmented Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional (LKF) with Lyapunov stability theory, some sufficient conditions are composed in the structure of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) and it can be interpreted through some known software collection. Finally, a practical example with simulation is provided to indicate the usefulness of the suggested control design technique. Highlights • This is the first attempt to deal the non-fragile sampled-data feedback controller design along with gain fluctuation parameters for aircraft flight control systems. • A more generalized non-fragile sampled-data controller is designed for the proposed aircraft flight control systems subject to randomly occurring uncertainties, input delay, and external disturbance and gain variations. • Based on Lyapunov stability theory with Jensens integral inequality, a new set of sufficient conditions is derived in terms of LMIs to achieve the proposed aircraft flight control system is stochastically stable with a prescribed dissipative performance index. • Finally, we calculated maximum allowable upper bound of time varying delay for special cases namely H ∞ , passivity, and combined H ∞ and passivity which are provided in Table. Moreover, the performances of desired dissipative case and its special case are classified in the numerical simulation part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A composited integrated guidance and control (IGC) algorithm is presented to tackle the problem of the IGC design in the dive phase for the bank-to-turn (BTT) vehicle with the inaccuracy information of the line-of-sight (LOS) rate. For the sake of theoretical derivation, an IGC model in the pitch plane is established. The high-order finite-time state observer (FTSO), with the LOS angle as the single input, is employed to reconstruct the states of the system online. Besides, a composited IGC algorithm is presented via the fusion of back-stepping and dynamic inverse. Compared with the traditional IGC algorithm, the proposed composited IGC method can attenuate effectively the design conservation of the flight control system, while the LOS rate is mixed with noise. Extensive experiments have been performed to demonstrate that the proposed approach is globally finite-time stable and strongly robust against parameter uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a multiple-constraints-guaranteed midcourse guidance law for the interception of the hypersonic targets. In traditional midcourse law design, the constraints of the aero-thermal heating are rarely taken into consideration. The performance of the infrared detection system may be degraded and the instability of the flight control system may be induced. To address this problem, a state-constrained model predictive static programming method is introduced such that both terminal constraints (position and angle) and optimal energy consumption can be ensured. As a result, a sub-optimal midcourse guidance, guaranteeing the aforementioned multiple-constraints to be never violated, is synthesized. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with finite-time output feedback control for a class of discrete-time switched linear systems. The mode-dependent persistent dwell-time (MDPDT) switching is considered, which is more general than dwell-time switching and average dwell-time switching. By using the MDPDT approach and multiple Lyapunov functions technique, sufficient conditions are proposed so that the closed-loop system is finite-time bounded with a guaranteed H ∞ performance. Furthermore, the corresponding criterion is proposed to design a set of dynamic output feedback (DOF) controllers for the switched system. Finally, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with dynamic output feedback control for a class of switched systems with mode-dependent average dwell-time switching. By constructing a quasi-time-dependent Lyapunov function, the issues of global uniform asymptotic stability and $\ell _{2}$ -gain analysis for the switched system are addressed first. Then, a set of reduced-order output feedback controllers is designed, which is both mode-dependent and quasi-time-dependent. Compared with time-independent criteria, the new results greatly reduce the conservatism. The effectiveness and merits of the proposed method are illustrated with a numerical example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cites the development of human powered aircrafts. History on the efforts of man to inspire the creation of manually powered planes; Features from first to third generation aircraft; Problems on control, stability and energy transmission; Design requirements to reduce drag and induce slow flight; Focus on the wing area to provide flight equilibrium; Mechanism of the three axes of yaw, pitch and roll.