Back to the Future?
Following successful demonstration of this technology, one might well ask where
it is today. First, we should record the fact that the team did enjoy
the unqualified support of DARPA and the Air Force for 6 years, and $42
million - a long time for DARPA funding to last. To some extent, the
Lockheed PA team was a victim of its own early success. Demo 2 in the
middle of Phase 1 was such an eye-popping success that the original
development strategy was accelerated. The original plan was to
demonstrate capability on Phase 1, grow to a full operational knowledge base
in Phase 2, and achieve real-time performance on a stable knowledge base in
Phase 3. With the success of Phase 1, it was decided to combine the
original Phases 2 and 3, simultaneously enhancing the knowledge bases and
recoding for real-time operation. There were significant issues
associated with achieving real-time, notably getting C++ to behave properly
across multiple processors with shared memory. Consequently, at the
time when we needed aggressive marketing to promote the next phase of
development, it appeared that we were not going to achieve the revised goals
of Phase 2. The marketing effort faded, and in spite of the eventual
success of Demo 4, there was no follow-on activity in place.
The situation was not helped by the state of the F-22 program at that
time. While DARPA and the Air Force were looking to the F-22 as the
application vehicle for this technology, neither the contractor team
(Lockheed Martin and Boeing) nor the Air Force Program office could be
convinced of the applicability of the technology. At that period of
time, there were no aircraft flying, and the program was more concerned with
the airframe and its cost than with the potential that more technology in
the cockpit might help the pilot to be more effective.
So the the applicability of this
concept was demonstrated in a realistic simulation environment, but it was left
to the PA contractors to take the technology to the marketplace. The
following is a partial list of the subsequent applications:
- The Rotorcraft Pilot's Associate is the Army's application of
PA technology. The Lockheed team combined with Sikorsky helicopters to
compete against a team that has subsequently by way of acquisitions become
Boeing helicopters. The Boeing team, using the technology from the
McDonnell Douglas Pilot's Associate program, was awarded the contract, and is
close to flight test of the system. Some of the Lockheed team
subcontractors were involved in the PVI implementation, attempting to
integrate the PGG approach with the Task Network used by Boeing. I'm not
sure that integration ever succeeded very well.
- It seemed that Air Traffic Management (ATM) offered a
significant opportunity for PA technology to improve the safety and efficiency
of airline operations, and the integration of military air traffic into the
civilian networks. NASA sponsored a significant amount of studies. The
results were enough to show that PA technology could enable free flight
throughout the continental and trans-oceanic air space, with enormous savings
in operational costs for the airlines and the Air Traffic Control
infrastructure, while also offering an extra level of safety. However,
the handoff to the FAA was never achieved, some opportunities to demonstrate
capability came and went, and the effort has languished.
- ...
last updated 10/6/2002 by David
Smith