I have talked a number of times in the recent past about the technology developed to prevent aircraft from hitting the ground…and killing the people in that plane. I guest-hosted a recent episode of the Fighter Pilot Podcast and interviewed USAF Lt Col ‘Cinco’ Hamilton as we discussed Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance Systems (Auto GCAS) in detail. I have flown and tested 3 different Auto GCAS systems through the years, first on the F16 E/F (built for the UAE Air Force), then as part of the LM Skunkworks team that conducted research to mature Auto GCAS for the USAF (which went into the F-16 fleet) and finally for the F-35. Cinco, who survived a midair in an F-15C, flew as part of the first Air Collision Avoidance testing team, later led the F-35 test force at Edwards AFB and was integral to the incorporation, testing and fielding of Auto GCAS on the F-35. Our teams were awarded the highest honor in aviation, the Robert J. Collier Trophy, from the National Aeronautic Association in 2018 for the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America for that year.
Why does this matter? I was on the first CF-18 course 40 years ago where we were all destined for the first operational CF-18 squadron. Our most talented fighter pilot, Captain ‘Spike’ Milligan, a Fighter Weapons School graduate (the Canadian version of Top Gun), was killed a couple of months into the course, hitting the ground doing 700 KCAS. Over the years, 7 or the 16 fatalities in the Canadian Air Force have been due to guys hitting the ground. There have been so many killed in every military service from flying into the ground. Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) is the single biggest killer of pilots in history….and we developed the technology to prevent that from ever happening again. ‘We’ means a big ‘we’…teams from many organizations, experts, engineers, scientists, leaders and test pilots all working on this technology to get it into fighters to save lives. No one team made it happen, no one engineer or test pilot. We all did it.
So far there are 12 F-16 pilots saved and 11 F-16s…do that math!…one was a 2-seat F-16 where both pilots were incapacitated. One F-22 Raptor has been saved and at least one F-35, but likely more. Soon this technology will be fielded on old legacy F-18s (Marine Corps and Canada) and US Navy Super Hornets. Someday Boeing and Airbus will put this technology into their passenger aircraft and accidents like the 2 Boeing 737 Max fatalities will never happen again.
I have included the video link to the Heads Up Display recording of the first actual Auto GCAS save which was a young Dutch F-16 student who blacked himself out during a dogfighting training mission near Tucson, Arizona.
Give a listen to the episode, watch the HUD video, and tell me what you think.
Having lost a couple of friends from the CF18 operator community to CFIT, I am very happy to be part of the project that is putting Auto GCAS into Canadian Hornets.
7 0f 16….that’s a lot of guys.
Legacy Hornet flight testing for Auto GCAS does not begin until this October. Super Hornet will be 1 -2 years after that. That is a long time to wait for this system where the technology development was completed more than 10 years ago. Canadian CF-18s won’t see this protection for a number of years unfortunately.
The RCAF lost 114 CF-104’s, and 35 pilots. While I was on squadron in Germany, we lost seven pilots hitting the ground. There were several other ground hits where the pilot was able to eject, usually hitting trees.
Would the GCAS be as applicable where the role, like CF-104’s, was to penetrate the Warsaw Pact at 540 KIAS at well under 250 AGL, and a millisecond of inattention or the slightest twitch was immediately fatal?
Auto GCAS has a threshold lower than anyone you ever met flying close to the ground…over mountains, down valleys, across desert floors or over the water. So yes, it would have saved them all.
Billie, Would this system been effective for low level weapons delivery missions such as with the NATO F-104 operations in the 60’s and 70’s?
Jim
The terrain matching is near perfect, and a shallow dive is easier to calculate impact and protect from. We flew it very low along the desert floor around Edwards AFB and Death Valley and could not trigger it at less than 100 ft AGL flying along. So yes, those years of guys hitting the trees and killing themselves would not have occurred with this technology.
Hi Billie F. Not sure if your intel sources were watching the civilian side of aviation but Airbus already did put autoflight limits in their aircraft with the flight control computer systems, 4 of them, such that there is a limit of allowable pitch and roll commands by/from the pilot. +/-66 degrees. If he/she needed more, not allowed. This is/was a big question of the Captain’s authority to carry out his inalienable FAR responsibility to safely carry out the flight, when Airbus presented the A-320. Who is the captain? The computer? It was a certification nightmare for many reasons, including Airbus’ disregarding of the FAR’s autoflight hierarchy protocols.
This to me seems like an auto solution to a training problem. The US Navy had a similar unacknowledged training problem with the F-14 during a single engine compressor stall while attempting to land on a carrier. Check NATOPS. Boeing is almost in an existential situation because of that dichotomy of giving some small amount of extra training or sticking in the MCAS. Two crashes and many lives later and are we any smarter? I think not.
Are you suggesting that an auto flight control system will decide whether the fighter pilot will kill the auto system/jet and then do what and when? If the pilot can’t handle the G or the maneuvering then maybe he/she should be in supply or a civilian.
I think the killed and saved numbers are peacetime data so I hope you put a war/peace switch or a circuit breaker to let this system take the day off if we ever have to actually try and kill somebody. What happened to ramming?
The CF-104 low level flights we trained for were daytime at 100 feet AGL, 450 KIAS, or as the weather deteriorated we climbed to a radar altitude of 1000 feet AGL above known stuff, five miles left/right and ahead of track. The F-111 had an autoflight system that worked knap of the earth at 50 feet AGL. Lots of stained shorts in that program.
What will this system gain us in wartime? I believe it is a great system in peacetime training, particularly when the training fails or was not given. My thoughts anyway.
Bill. I don’t think you understood what we explained in the podcast or what I have described a number of times in my blogs and in the media. Flight controls systems have limited what pilots can do to keep them safe and flying for 2 generations now. The Automatic Ground Collision System will save the pilot who is going to die…period. The pilot, whether disoriented in bad weather, at night, unconscious due to G LOC, diving too low on an air-to-ground weapons delivery, strafing too low on a pull out or just flying too low….will die. Auto GCAS will take control, pull the jet away from the terrain and then, once the terrain has been cleared, release control right back to the pilot. The Auto GCAS intrusion can be as little as 2 or 3 seconds if the flight path was relatively level like along a desert floor or maybe just enough to nudge the jet over a ridge top that the pilot was not going to clear.
I hear lots of ego-based responses from -104 pilots talking about how low they could fly and how they would never have needed such a system. And then I look at the statistics of dead -104 pilots to know that they actually did need such a system.
What will this system gain us in wartime? It will keep pilots from killing themselves and instead let them kill the enemy….that’s what it will give us.
It seems you missed that the Auto-GCAS was a Swedish US cooperation and hadn’t happen without the Swedish input.
And by the way Gripen had Auto-GCAS before the F-35.
I did not miss the Swedish input to the initial development of Auto GCAS. In my blog entitled ‘The Afterburn Podcast”, I spoke with Rain Waters and at time :53, we discussed Auto GCAS. During the history description of development, I mentioned the Swedish / US program as an off-shoot of auto weapons delivery. I am aware of the development of Auto GCAS in Gripen because our team went to Linkoping once our flight testing was complete to give an update to Saab on our findings. Saab elected not to pursue the ACAT solution which eventually went into the F-16 and later F-35 and chose a less elaborate Auto GCAS solution. Indeed, Gripen had Auto GCAS before F-35 but a number of years after the F-16 integration. The only real race in this development is to get Auto GCAS in every fleet before there is another pilot killed and airplane lost. That is why we all work so hard to communicate the highlights of this technology to inform as many stakeholders and aircrew as possible to push out the message.