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- NASA has begun testing a radical new
flight control system for military jets that develops the vectored thrust
principle pioneered in the British Harrier jump-jet.
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- The new vectored thrust system enables
almost impossibly tight turns and climbing manoeuvres and will eventually
be used in a new generation of super-agile American fighters. The first
of these, rumoured to be called Project Aurora, would be a contender to
use the vectored thrust system first.
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- The F15 "Active" fighter marries
a new F100-PW-229 engine with a special digital control system, called
Inner Loop Thrust Vectoring, or ILTV. The engine in the otherwise conventional
looking fighter is key to the advance: it has long deflector blades attached
to the rear that deflect thrust up to 20 degrees off the centre line of
the aircraft. These thrust deflectors are digitally connected to the pilot's
joystick and are permanently part of the control system he uses.
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- "The airplane displays outstanding
flying qualities in all thrust vectoring modes," said Nasa project
manager Berwin Kock at Dryden Flight Research Centre, Edwards, California.
Nasa test pilots use a handling rating system called the Cooper-Harper
Index and the new fighter was given ultra-high ratings of grade one or
two for its handling right from the first flight.
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- "Most test pilots are very reluctant
to give a Cooper-Harper rating of one," said research pilot Jim Smolka,
"because it means that the aircraft is perfect, that there is nothing
the pilot can find that needs to be improved. The fact that all of the
pilots agreed that the flying qualities deserve ratings of one and two
means that the aircraft really has exceptional handling."
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- Nasa is not the first to develop thrust
vectoring. Russian designers have built a series of Sukhoi fighters, culminating
in the recent Su37 TVC, which showed that it could perform impossible-looking
somersaults in mid-air using its thrust vectoring control system.
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