crowl@cs.rochester.edu (Lawrence Crowl) (11/29/90)
From: crowl@cs.rochester.edu (Lawrence Crowl) The US Air Force and Navy appear to be pushing towards multi-role aircraft. One reason is that they use a larger fraction of their aircraft even as the needs for different kinds of airpower change. This capability is especially important when your resources are limited (through either budget or treaty). The problem is that multi-role aircraft tend to be both more expensive and less capable than a single-role aircraft, _in_that_role_. Can we make multi-role aircraft cost effective relative to single-role aircraft? My (almost completely uninformed) opinion is that we can, provided that we only ask that the aircraft change roles on the ground. My idea is that we should be able to reconfigure an aircraft among appropriate roles by swaping modules stored at the airbase. We must account for several differences in aircraft depending on their role. Airframe Size We are obviously going to need different airframes for radically different roles. I am not going to claim that you can convert an air superiority fighter into a mid-air tanker. But for roles in which the airframes are close in size and required performance, we ought to be able to use a single airframe Avionics I believe we have the technology to modularize the avionics and change avionics modules as appropriate to the mission. This will require a large effort to standardize flexible avionics interfaces. This approach will also payoff when it comes to upgrading avionics in single-role aircraft. Wing Loading Air supperiority fighters want a light wing loading so that they have a great deal of maneuverability. Strike aircraft want a high wing loading so that they can fly fast on the deck. We can change the wing loading by changing the wings. Bolt on the air supperiority wings one day, and the strike wings the next. Surely, if we can adjust the wing angle in flight we can bolt a new set on. I think the primary techinical difficulty is that you want to keep the hydraulic connections to the wing to a minimum. This in turn implies that the landing gear be on the fuselage. (It's probably stronger there anyway.) The production runs on multi-role aircraft are likely to be longer than those of single-role aircraft, which means that per-unit costs are reduced, even when there is a fixed number of aircraft. Development costs are less clear --- higher per aircraft type, but fewer aircraft types. With modular avionics, long-term improvements are probably cheaper. Can we make cost effective, modular, multi-role aircraft? What are the problems? -- Lawrence Crowl 716-275-9499 University of Rochester crowl@cs.rochester.edu Computer Science Department ...!rutgers!rochester!crowl Rochester, New York, 14627