Core Avionics Master Plan - NAVAIR - U.S. Navy

Core Avionics Master Plan 2011 Appendix A-5Mandates and Milestones:Secretary of Defense Memorandum: Reducing Preventable Mishaps. (May 2003and Jun 2006) Challenges Services to achieve a 50 percent reduction in mishaps.OPNAVINST 13210.1A Naval Aviation Policy for Aircraft Safety Systems Avionics.(03 Sep 2009) Directs incorporation of specified flight safety capabilities:Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) avoidance.Crash survivable flight information and audio recording.Airborne collision avoidance.Military Flight Operations Quality Assurance (MFOQA).Required system performance parameters are delineated for each of the capabilities. Itcalls for compliance reviews to be conducted at each program milestone, andencourages pursuit of common system solutions. Waiver requests are to be submittedto OPNAV (N88) and must include type/model/series, which safety element is beingrequested for waiver, justification for the waiver, assessment of risk, actions takentoward compliance and plan ahead to achieve compliance.Capability Element Evolution:A. Terrain and Obstacle Avoidance. This capability element addressesequipment that provides awareness of proximity with the ground to prevent ControlledFlight Into Terrain (CFIT) mishaps.1. Current capabilities.There are two primary CFIT avoidance solutions integrated into several platforms.Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) monitors onboard radar altimeter readingsto warn aircrew of dangerous descent rates. GPWS provides aural warnings to alert theaircrew to impending CFIT. Terrain Awareness Warning System (TAWS) uses softwarealgorithms to provide improved predictive CFIT warning capability by comparing aircraftaltitude, attitude, and airspeed developed from GPS and/or Inertial Navigation System(INS) against on-board Digital Terrain Elevation Data (DTED) database information.This capability is only available to those platforms that can host the database and havesufficient processing power to drive the TAWS algorithm. TAWS provides improveddynamic flight profile protection over GPWS as well as aural or visual cues that havebeen credited for saving aircraft.Rotary wing aircraft are suffering significant losses in current operations in OverseasContingency Operations. On a daily basis (almost on a per-mission basis), helicoptersare entering Degraded Visual Environment (DVE) conditions (also known as „brownout”).The landing attitude and heavy disk loading of the CH-53 make it particularlyprone to creating DVE. In the last five years, more aircraft have been damaged or lostdue to reduced situational awareness in DVE conditions than have been lost to enemyfire. Mishaps occur from CFITs, roll-overs, collisions with obstacles or collisions withother aircraft. Legacy platforms lack adequate attitude and hover drift indications, hovercapableautomatic flight controls, or sensors necessary to enable them to conductroutinely safe, controlled recoveries in DVE conditions. Aircrews currently compensatefor the conditions using pilot experience and minimum hover touchdown techniques.A-5 Flight Safety 3