U. S. Navy VTOL Automatic Landing System Development Program

The role of fixed and Rotary Wing VTOL in the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps missions has been expanded recently with the advent of the Light Airborne Multipurpose System (LAMPS) and the Sea Control Ship (SCS) concepts. These aircraft must be available to operate in severe weather conditions, night and day. The Naval Air Systems Command has started a project to coordinate the various technologies which impact on the capability of the pilot, the aircraft systems, and the landing environment, with a goal of an approach, hover and landing under instrument meteorological conditions. A number of display and automatic control system development programs which will be of significance in the VTOL Hover and Landing, are in the exploratory and advanced development phases, HOVVAC (Hovering Vehicle Versatile Automatic Control) is a research and development automatic flight control system which is being utilized to develop the requirements for VTOL automatic approach, hover and landing. The test program to date includes system definition of the vehicle dynamics via a sine wave forcing function method. Curved and straight path approaches have been controlled by the airborne digital computer in a simulated microwave landing system environment.