Military Aircraft Missions Research Articles

HIF-1 ACTIVATION AND INFLAMMATORY RESPONSES TO HYPOXIA

Acute hypoxia is a significant physiological danger during high-altitude flying and military aircraft missions. The human brain requires a constant supply of oxygen to function properly, and is susceptible to settings with low availability of air oxygen. Hypoxia can influence inflammatory signalling, and both central and systemic responses can activate HIF pathway genes. HIFs are critical molecules that regulate inflammation andhypoxia, ensuring appropriate cell function and survival. Hypoxia is the condition in which insufficient oxygen reaches the body's tissues. It can be caused by a decrease in partial oxygen pressure (PO2) in the environment, problems with breathing and/or oxygen transport, or the inability of tissues to utilise oxygen. Different organs are hypoxic due to differences in tissue oxygen tensions, which are determined by differences in aerobic metabolism. Extremely hypoxic individuals have the most dramatic systemic and neurological adaptations to persistent hypoxia. In this review, we provide an overview of central and systemic responses to hypoxia and discuss the activation of HIF-1 pathway.

Military aircraft mission planning

We consider a military mission planning problem where a given fleet of aircraft should attack a number of ground targets. At each attack, two aircraft need to be synchronized in both space and time. Further, there are multiple attack options against each targets, with different target effects. The objective is to maximize the outcome of the entire attack, while also minimizing the mission timespan. Real-life mission planning instances involve only a few targets and a few aircraft, but are still computationally challenging. We present metaheuristic solution methods for this problem, based on an earlier presented model. The problem includes three types of decisions: attack directions, task assignments and scheduling, and the solution methods exploit this structure in a two-stage approach. In an outer stage, a heuristic search is performed with respect to attack directions, while in an inner stage the other two decisions are optimized, given the outer stage decisions. The proposed metaheuristics are capable of producing high-quality solutions and are fast enough to be incorporated in a decision support tool.

Military aircraft mission planning: a generalized vehicle routing model with synchronization and precedence

We introduce a military aircraft mission planning problem where a given fleet of aircraft should attack a number of ground targets. Due to the nature of the attack, two aircraft need to rendezvous at the target, that is, they need to be synchronized in both space and time. At the attack, one aircraft is launching a guided weapon, while the other is illuminating the target. Each target is associated with multiple attack and illumination options. Further, there may be precedence constraints between targets, limiting the order of the attacks. The objective is to maximize the outcome of the entire attack, while also minimizing the mission timespan. We give a linear mixed-integer programming model of the problem, which can be characterized as a generalized vehicle routing problem with synchronization and precedence side constraints. Numerical results are presented for problem instances of realistic size.

Impacts of aero-engine deteriorations on military aircraft mission's effectiveness

Abstract International political and socio-economic developments have led the armed forces of many countries to become more aware of how their increasingly-stringent financial budgets are spent. One major expenditure for military authorities is upon aero-engines, because in-service deterioration in any mechanical device, such as an aircraft's gas-turbine engine, is inevitable. Each deterioration has an adverse effect on the performance and shortens the reliable operational life of the engine, thereby resulting in higher life-cycle costs. For a military aircraft's mission-profiles, the consequences of an aero-engine's deterioration upon the aircraft's operational-effectiveness as well as its fuel consumption and life have been predicted in this project using validated computer-simulations. These help in making wiser management-decisions, so leading to the achievement of improved engine utilisation, lower overall life-cycle costs and optimal mission effectiveness for squadrons of aircraft.