Flight Planning Tool an Aid for Efficient Flight Evaluation

Abstract

Airborne surveillance systems have multiple sensors and communication links on board a suitable platform. They work in a cohesive manner to provide effective surveillance over the region of interest. The performance proving of such a system is challenging and requires flight trails extending over years. The test results often have to be interpreted using statistical analysis of the flight test data. An efficient way is to carefully design the flight test profiles such that enough samples can be collected during the test and multiple requirements can be tested in a single sortie. Such meticulous test strategies where both own ship platform and test targets are moving with high dynamics call for software based tool for planning of test sorties and the test points. Flight Planning Tool (FPT) plays an important role in pre-flight stage during developmental trials for analysis of the MOEs and MOPs of overall system and of various on-board sensors of an airborne multi-sensor system. The FPT provides statistical & graphical analysis for sensor behaviour for various scenarios (flight trials) before actual flight test is conducted. It provides prior information on number of valid samples for sensor testing during flight trials. In addition, the tool aids in assessing number of profiles to be flown for proving each MOE. The profiles can also be optimised such that valid samples are collected for evaluation.