"John R Weiss" wrote in message
news:t1%5c.30768$_w.528631@attbi_s53...
"Paul F Austin" wrote...
You're making the assumption that the FOV will remain "soda-straw". When
you
consider the DAS baselined for F-35, an operator of a UAV designed to
fly a
CAS mission could have the same situational awareness as a pilot on
board
and _better_situational awareness than any aircraft now flying,
essentially
a 4pi steradian field of regard The camera systems (from Indigo Systems
http://www.indigosystems.com/company/PR/pr_030318.html) are quite small
and
would be feasible for an aircraft able to carry the ordnance in the
first
place.

Looks like an interesting concept, but probably not as straightforward as
you
imagine...

Assuming the system performs as advertised, I would see the major
stumbling
block to be the display to the UAV operator. A "helmet sight" display
would be
too narrow for situational awareness, unless it was slaved to his head
movements. However, if you could sit him inside a dome (similar to
current
advanced flight simulators) and project the "stitched" images around him,
it
could work. Transmitting that much data to a remote operator and
processing it
in real time could be a significant problem, though.

You should read a bit about F-35. That's precisely how DAS will work. The
HMS will project the DAS camera images depending on where the pilot is
looking. The description in AvWeek said that even if aircraft structure was
"in the way", the pilot would be given the view along the sight line he was
looking at. If a wing is in the way, he'll have "X-ray vision". And since
the DAS cameras are IR there's that extra advantage.

When I first looked at F-35, it seemed a looong step backward in terms of
situational awareness, with virtually no rear-quadrant visibility. DAS
promises to fix that. If it works for F-35 then it should work for UCAVs.


Another problem would be to get the operator used to visualizing the world
in
IR. All his threat training would have to be based on IR imagery to be
useful
with his IR sensor suite. Target ID becomes a significant problem again
in
terms of blue-on-blue potential.

That's true but it's currently true for NVG flight. CAS doesn't stop at
sundown. There's a whole lot of work being done on Blue-Force Tracking which
was used in rudimentary fashion in Iraq-II.