Integrated helicopter survivability

A high level of survivability is important to protect military personnel and equipment and is central to UK defence policy. Integrated Survivability is the systems engineering methodology to achieve optimum survivability at an affordable cost, enabling a mission to be completed successfully in the face of a hostile environment. “Integrated Helicopter Survivability” is an emerging discipline that is applying this systems engineering approach within the helicopter domain. Philosophically the overall survivability objective is ‘zero attrition’, even though this is unobtainable in practice. The research question was: “How can helicopter survivability be assessed in an integrated way so that the best possible level of survivability can be achieved within the constraints and how will the associated methods support the acquisition process?” The research found that principles from safety management could be applied to the survivability problem, in particular reducing survivability risk to as low as reasonably practicable (ALARP). A survivability assessment process was developed to support this approach and was linked into the military helicopter life cycle. This process positioned the survivability assessment methods and associated input data derivation activities. The system influence diagram method was effective at defining the problem and capturing the wider survivability interactions, including those with the defence lines of development (DLOD). Influence diagrams and Quality Function Deployment (QFD) methods were effective visual tools to elicit stakeholder requirements and improve communication across organisational and domain boundaries. The semi-quantitative nature of the QFD method leads to numbers that are not real. These results are suitable for helping to prioritise requirements early in the helicopter life cycle, but they cannot provide the quantifiable estimate of risk needed to demonstrate ALARP. The probabilistic approach implemented within the Integrated Survivability Assessment Model (ISAM) was developed to provide a quantitative estimate of ‘risk’ to support the approach of reducing survivability risks to ALARP. Limitations in available input data for the rate of encountering threats leads to a probability of survival that is not a real number that can be used to assess actual loss rates. However, the method does support an assessment across platform options, provided that the ‘test environment’ remains consistent throughout the assessment. The survivability assessment process and ISAM have been applied to an acquisition programme, where they have been tested to support the survivability decision making and design process. The survivability ‘test environment’ is an essential element of the survivability assessment process and is required by integrated survivability tools such as ISAM. This test environment, comprising of threatening situations that span the complete spectrum of helicopter operations requires further development. The ‘test environment’ would be used throughout the helicopter life cycle from selection of design concepts through to test and evaluation of delivered solutions. It would be updated as part of the through life capability management (TLCM) process. A framework of survivability analysis tools requires development that can provide probabilistic input data into ISAM and allow derivation of confidence limits. This systems level framework would be capable of informing more detailed survivability design work later in the life cycle and could be enabled through a MATLAB® based approach. Survivability is an emerging system property that influences the whole system capability. There is a need for holistic capability level analysis tools that quantify survivability along with other influencing capabilities such as: mobility (payload / range), lethality, situational awareness, sustainability and other mission capabilities. It is recommended that an investigation of capability level analysis methods across defence should be undertaken to ensure a coherent and compliant approach to systems engineering that adopts best practice from across the domains. Systems dynamics techniques should be considered for further use by Dstl and the wider MOD, particularly within the survivability and operational analysis domains. This would improve understanding of the problem space, promote a more holistic approach and enable a better balance of capability, within which survivability is one essential element. There would be value in considering accidental losses within a more comprehensive ‘survivability’ analysis. This approach would enable a better balance to be struck between safety and survivability risk mitigations and would lead to an improved, more integrated overall design

¿Safety Management System¿ for light RPAS Analysis of a real case: study on the safety and the integration in the civil airspace with an evaluation of the regulatory impact in Italy

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

UAS Pilots Code – Annotated Version 1.0

The UAS PILOTS CODE (UASPC) offers recommendations to advance flight safety, ground safety, airmanship, and professionalism.6 It presents a vision of excellence for UAS pilots and operators, and includes general guidance for all types of UAS. The UASPC offers broad guidance—a set of values—to help a pilot interpret and apply standards and regulations, and to confront real world challenges to avoid incidents and accidents. It is designed to help UAS pilots develop standard operating procedures (SOPs), effective risk management,7 safety management systems (SMS), and to encourage UAS pilots to consider themselves aviators and participants in the broader aviation community

System elements required to guarantee the reliability, availability and integrity of decision-making information in a complex airborne autonomous system

Current air traffic management systems are centred on piloted aircraft, in which all the main decisions are made by humans. In the world of autonomous vehicles, there will be a driving need for decisions to be made by the system rather than by humans due to the benefits of more automation such as reducing the likelihood of human error, handling more air traffic in national airspace safely, providing prior warnings of potential conflicts etc. The system will have to decide on courses of action that will have highly safety critical consequences. One way to ensure these decisions are robust is to guarantee that the information being used for the decision is valid and of very high integrity. [Continues.

Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems Technologies and Operations

As the quarter-century mark in the 21st Century nears, new aviation-related equipment has come to the forefront, both to help us and to haunt us. (Coutu, 2020) This is particularly the case with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). These vehicles have grown in popularity and accessible to everyone. Of different shapes and sizes, they are widely available for purchase at relatively low prices. They have moved from the backyard recreation status to important tools for the military, intelligence agencies, and corporate organizations. New practical applications such as military equipment and weaponry are announced on a regular basis – globally. (Coutu, 2020) Every country seems to be announcing steps forward in this bludgeoning field. In our successful 2nd edition of Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the Cyber Domain: Protecting USA’s Advanced Air Assets (Nichols, et al., 2019), the authors addressed three factors influencing UAS phenomena. First, unmanned aircraft technology has seen an economic explosion in production, sales, testing, specialized designs, and friendly / hostile usages of deployed UAS / UAVs / Drones. There is a huge global growing market and entrepreneurs know it. Second, hostile use of UAS is on the forefront of DoD defense and offensive planners. They are especially concerned with SWARM behavior. Movies like “Angel has Fallen,” where drones in a SWARM use facial recognition technology to kill USSS agents protecting POTUS, have built the lore of UAS and brought the problem forefront to DHS. Third, UAS technology was exploding. UAS and Counter- UAS developments in navigation, weapons, surveillance, data transfer, fuel cells, stealth, weight distribution, tactics, GPS / GNSS elements, SCADA protections, privacy invasions, terrorist uses, specialized software, and security protocols has exploded. (Nichols, et al., 2019) Our team has followed / tracked joint ventures between military and corporate entities and specialized labs to build UAS countermeasures. As authors, we felt compelled to address at least the edge of some of the new C-UAS developments. It was clear that we would be lucky if we could cover a few of – the more interesting and priority technology updates – all in the UNCLASSIFIED and OPEN sphere. Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems: Technologies and Operations is the companion textbook to our 2nd edition. The civilian market is interesting and entrepreneurial, but the military and intelligence markets are of concern because the US does NOT lead the pack in C-UAS technologies. China does. China continues to execute its UAS proliferation along the New Silk Road Sea / Land routes (NSRL). It has maintained a 7% growth in military spending each year to support its buildup. (Nichols, et al., 2019) [Chapter 21]. They continue to innovate and have recently improved a solution for UAS flight endurance issues with the development of advanced hydrogen fuel cell. (Nichols, et al., 2019) Reed and Trubetskoy presented a terrifying map of countries in the Middle East with armed drones and their manufacturing origin. Guess who? China. (A.B. Tabriski & Justin, 2018, December) Our C-UAS textbook has as its primary mission to educate and train resources who will enter the UAS / C-UAS field and trust it will act as a call to arms for military and DHS planners.https://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/1031/thumbnail.jp

Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the Cyber Domain

Unmanned Aircraft Systems are an integral part of the US national critical infrastructure. The authors have endeavored to bring a breadth and quality of information to the reader that is unparalleled in the unclassified sphere. This textbook will fully immerse and engage the reader / student in the cyber-security considerations of this rapidly emerging technology that we know as unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). The first edition topics covered National Airspace (NAS) policy issues, information security (INFOSEC), UAS vulnerabilities in key systems (Sense and Avoid / SCADA), navigation and collision avoidance systems, stealth design, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms; weapons systems security; electronic warfare considerations; data-links, jamming, operational vulnerabilities and still-emerging political scenarios that affect US military / commercial decisions. This second edition discusses state-of-the-art technology issues facing US UAS designers. It focuses on counter unmanned aircraft systems (C-UAS) – especially research designed to mitigate and terminate threats by SWARMS. Topics include high-altitude platforms (HAPS) for wireless communications; C-UAS and large scale threats; acoustic countermeasures against SWARMS and building an Identify Friend or Foe (IFF) acoustic library; updates to the legal / regulatory landscape; UAS proliferation along the Chinese New Silk Road Sea / Land routes; and ethics in this new age of autonomous systems and artificial intelligence (AI).https://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/1027/thumbnail.jp

Climbing and Walking Robots

Nowadays robotics is one of the most dynamic fields of scientific researches. The shift of robotics researches from manufacturing to services applications is clear. During the last decades interest in studying climbing and walking robots has been increased. This increasing interest has been in many areas that most important ones of them are: mechanics, electronics, medical engineering, cybernetics, controls, and computers. Today’s climbing and walking robots are a combination of manipulative, perceptive, communicative, and cognitive abilities and they are capable of performing many tasks in industrial and non- industrial environments. Surveillance, planetary exploration, emergence rescue operations, reconnaissance, petrochemical applications, construction, entertainment, personal services, intervention in severe environments, transportation, medical and etc are some applications from a very diverse application fields of climbing and walking robots. By great progress in this area of robotics it is anticipated that next generation climbing and walking robots will enhance lives and will change the way the human works, thinks and makes decisions. This book presents the state of the art achievments, recent developments, applications and future challenges of climbing and walking robots. These are presented in 24 chapters by authors throughtot the world The book serves as a reference especially for the researchers who are interested in mobile robots. It also is useful for industrial engineers and graduate students in advanced study

Next generation flight management systems for manned and unmanned aircraft operations - automated separation assurance and collision avoidance functionalities

The demand for improved safety, efficiency and dynamic demand-capacity balancing due to the rapid growth of the aviation sector and the increasing proliferation of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in different classes of airspace pose significant challenges to avionics system developers. The design of Next Generation Flight Management Systems (NG-FMS) for manned and unmanned aircraft operations is performed by addressing the challenges identified by various Air Traffic Management (ATM) modernisation programmes and UAS Traffic Management (UTM) system initiatives. In particular, this research focusses on introducing automated Separation Assurance and Collision Avoidance (SA&CA) functionalities (mathematical models) in the NG-FMS. The innovative NG-FMS is also capable of supporting automated negotiation and validation of 4-Dimensional Trajectory (4DT) intents in coordination with novel ground-based Next Generation Air Traffic Management (NG-ATM) systems. One of the key research contributions is the development of a unified method for cooperative and non-cooperative SA&CA, addressing the technical and regulatory challenges of manned and unmanned aircraft coexistence in all classes of airspace. Analytical models are presented and validated to compute the overall avoidance volume in the airspace surrounding a tracked object, supporting automated SA&CA functionalities. The scientific basis of this approach is to assess real-time measurements and associated uncertainties affecting navigation states (of the host aircraft platform), tracking observables (of the static or moving object) and platform dynamics, and translate them to unified range and bearing uncertainty descriptors. The SA&CA unified approach provides an innovative analytical framework to generate high-fidelity dynamic geo-fences suitable for integration in the NG-FMS and in the ATM/UTM/defence decision support tools

Standardization Roadmap for Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Version 1.0

This Standardization Roadmap for Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Version 1.0 (“roadmap”) represents the culmination of the UASSC’s work to identify existing standards and standards in development, assess gaps, and make recommendations for priority areas where there is a perceived need for additional standardization and/or pre-standardization R&D. The roadmap has examined 64 issue areas, identified a total of 60 gaps and corresponding recommendations across the topical areas of airworthiness; flight operations (both general concerns and application-specific ones including critical infrastructure inspections, commercial services, and public safety operations); and personnel training, qualifications, and certification. Of that total, 40 gaps/recommendations have been identified as high priority, 17 as medium priority, and 3 as low priority. A “gap” means no published standard or specification exists that covers the particular issue in question. In 36 cases, additional R&D is needed. The hope is that the roadmap will be broadly adopted by the standards community and that it will facilitate a more coherent and coordinated approach to the future development of standards for UAS. To that end, it is envisioned that the roadmap will be widely promoted and discussed over the course of the coming year, to assess progress on its implementation and to identify emerging issues that require further elaboration