Wing and a prayer...

I hate to just post about someone's blog entry, but this was one of the more interesting DARPA projects I've seen lately.

Athena Technologies, now a Rockwell Collins subsdiary, blew half the right wing off a F-18 scale model in flight to demonstrate that its adaptive control system could automatically detect and react to damage, regain performance, continue to fly the aircraft and land it autonomously. Nothing was preprogrammed. The control system did not know which wing was going to be blown off, or when, says Athena. The test, conducted for DARPA, demonstrated real-time autonomous accommodation of damage, followed by adaptation of the control system to compensate for the damage.

Graham Warwick

Even has the video of the flight. Very interesting project with serious potential.


EDIT: Here is the actual press release from Rockwell Collins: www.rockwellcollins.com...



[edit on 26-6-2008 by _Del_]

Here us an Israeli F-15 flying on one wing.

That is awesome. I don't know if your average F-18 pilot would be able to fly his bird back after something like that. It's my contention that the last fighter pilot has been born.