The All Electric Airplane Revisited

The NASA and the military services (NADC and AFWAL) have all promoted the precepts of an “all electric airplane” that would eliminate distributed high pressure hydraulics and multiply different power sources in one airplane. This paper revisits the use of all electric power in military/commercial aircraft and discusses approaches by which the desired implementation might be achieved.

The subject and topic of “all electric aircraft” is not new and, in fact, a few U.S. and European aircraft have come very near to justifying that appellation. This paper discusses these past efforts to implement more use of electrics and it reviews the current and emergent technologies that will make the realization of the objective more achievable in the 1990s.