Combat Simulator Research Articles

Air-to-air combat simulation

The Flight Simulation Facility at the Warton Division of British Aerospace provides support for the design and development of advanced military aircraft. In fulfilling this rôle, opportunities often arise for innovation in the required flight simulation equipment. The combat simulator which we will describe is a good example of such an opportunity.The practice of using flight simulators for research and development is well established, and the range of problems which are solved by this means is continually growing. Computers, which are at the heart of all simulators, are being improved at a remarkable rate, and improvements in other areas—electronic, hydraulic and mechanical, all contribute to more effective simulators. At the same time, the demand for simulation increases because the cost saving trade-off improves as the cost of flight testing to the ever-more-stringent design goals increases.

Development of Automated Performance Measures for Introductory Air Combat Maneuvers

An exploratory study was conducted to develop automated performance measurement (APM) techniques for introductory air combat maneuvers. The method and results of the study can be summarized as follows: (1) The study used Northrop's LAS/WAVS air combat simulator, mechanized to simulate the F4J. (2) Seven F4J student pilots and six F4J instructor pilots each flew 16 barrel roll attacks against an autopilot-controlled bogey, for a total of 208 simulator runs. (3) A total of 552 objective performance measures and an average of 35 subjective performance measures were obtained on each run. (4) Using the simulator's replay capability, 64 of the original 208 runs were evaluated independently by three different instructors to obtain estimates of inter-observer reliability. Sixteen of these 64 runs were evaluated a second time by these same three instructors to obtain estimates of intra-observer reliability. (5) A master APM measures tape was constructed, which contains all of the subjective and objective measures obtained for each run in a format that permits statistical analyses to be conveniently performed on any desired subset of subjects, evaluators, or performance variables. (6) Several different univariate and multivariate statistical analyses were performed on selected subsets of the data, using the BMDP programs developed by UCLA. The objectives of this task were: a) to identify a preliminary set of automated measures which could be used to augment instructor evaluation of performance in introductory air-to-air tactics; and b) to assess the relative effectiveness of alternative statistical techniques for the measure identification process.

A manned air-to-air combat simulator.

This paper discusses the development of a simulator which utilizes two cockpits equipped with individual instruments, controls and visual displays. The objective is to provide a new means of evaluating airplane capabilities in air-to-air combat. Either pilot can maneuver, within his airplane's flight envelope, against the opposing airplane. All computation is by digital computer. A collimated display for each cockpit presents the opposing airplane, the gunsight and the earth. The images are stroke written by a Schmidt cathode-ray tube projector. An 80° field-of-view limitation is circumvented by presenting a mirror view when the opposing airplane is in a chase position and a radarlike synthetic display when it is not within the forward or aft 80° cone. Future developments will display the opposing airplanes' positions on the inside of spheres enclosing each cockpit.