RANDY GORDON: Well,
guys, you have
picked the coolest independent
activities period class you
could ever do at ground school.
This is the most
awesome thing possible
when I saw the course offerings.
So kudos to Tina and
Phil for teaching this.
This is a good, good.
Gig.
I go by Laz.
It's a fighter pilot thing.
All fighter pilots
have call signs.
They're not like what
you see in the movies.
By the way, Top Gun is the worst
movie for any fighter pilot
to watch.
It's terrible, drives you crazy.
No one is called
Maverick because they're
the most awesome thing on
the face of the planet.
Never happens that way.
You're always named
for something silly.
So the previous discussion
about crew resource management,
if you're a single seat, you
still have air traffic control,
you have other guys, I am living
proof that that's 100% true.
So I won't get into it too
much, but suffice to say,
if you know the biblical
story of Lazarus,
you know a lot about
how I got my name,
and I'll leave it at that.
Normally that's over
a beer afterwards.
So we're here to talk about
F-22 flight control stuff.
I'm going to give you the
punch line right at the start.
I'm here to tell you that
everything you're learning-- so
who's actually flown airplanes
here already, like sailplanes?
So a lot of guys.
So a lot of guys.
So first time then for
probably the other half
of the class or so.
So here's what I'm
here to tell you.
The same stuff that
you're learning
with respect to Cessnas and
all this stuff with respect
to the ground school, there's
no difference between this
and between my beloved Raptor.
It's the same thing.
So there's great relevance.
And you as MIT guys
have the ability
to derive and figure out
what makes the Raptor look
the way that it does, and we
can talk a lot about the flight
controls.
It's not cosmic.
We can go through that.
So with that, they always
have the standard personal
background slide.
Here's the gig.
I'll keep it really simple.
I am a test pilot, which
means I am a fighter pilot
and I'm also an engineer.
It means I like Beavis
and Butthead greatly,
and I read Carl Sagan.
It's the same thing to me.
So as a fighter
test pilot, you live
in the world of being
a fighter pilot,
but you also have the
ability to understand Matlab
and to be able to do cool
neat MIT-ish kind of things.
Because all of the
stuff that you're
working with as a test
pilot are brand new things--
new weapons, new avionics,
new airplanes, in some cases.
And that's not the world
of a fighter pilot.
Fighter pilots are exceptionally
good at taking this airplane
to combat and doing the normal
kind of missions with it.
But when there's
something new on board,
that requires an engineer.
So I have a deep,
deep connection
with this institution.
I finished up here
last year in 2018.
I've done a whole bunch of
other kind of funky stuff
along the way.
Two combat tours.
That was a lot of fun.
I'll tell you, flying is
one of my great passions.
Flying and getting
shot at and missed
is my second great passion.
That's much cooler.
And then when you can fly
and you can use that airplane
to actually protect
people from bad guys,
that's life-fulfilling to go
get a chance to go do that.
So we can talk a little bit
more through that as well.
Test pilots, we get a chance to
fly a lot of different stuff.
So you'll see this 76
different airplanes.
That might sound weird
to the rest of the world,
but in the world of flight
test, that's pretty normal.
And the reason
that's there is it's
just like-- look, by the
way, warning to the class,
I talk a lot in terms of movies,
Game of Thrones, or whatever,
television shows and sports
because no matter where
you come from, those
three topics always
tend to bring
everybody all together.
So it is just like what you--
when you've gone car shopping
and you sit in this car and go,
oh, man, I really like the
way this steering wheel feels
but I hate the way
the radio is set up,
and you go to another
car and you go, oh, man,
this is great from the sunroof
or whatever but this stinks.
That same kind of
discernment that you
have when you're shopping
for cars, this airplane
is a couple hundred
million dollars.
You don't want to
be wrong about that,
and so you want your
test pilots very, very
experienced in a lot
of different airplanes.
So I've got a chance
to fly helicopters--
spectacular.
In pilot training,
I don't know why,
but we send our worst
pilot training students
to helicopters.
It's the dumbest idea because
helicopters are really, really
challenging to go fly.
But we've had a chance
to fly helicopters.
Your discussion, Tina,
earlier about right of way,
I was laughing with
that because I've
flown a Zeppelin, an airship.
It's quite spectacular.
It's a big Lab-Z-Boy couch
with a big trim wheel
and big engines that actually
pivot on the outside,
so you can turn the
whole ship based on that.
That's pretty normal
for being a test pilot,
is getting a chance to fly a
lot of different airplanes,
more so than just one particular
airplane your whole life.
Most of my stuff is in fighters.
So I've flown every
frontline fighter
with the exception of the F-35.
Hopefully I'll fix that soon,
shortly, in a few months.
But a lot of stuff.
So MIT guy, Harvard guy.
Did some stuff.
It's been a good life.
Really, at the end of the
day what I want to impress on
you is I am 100% zero different
from anybody in this room.
I just have more
battle scars on me
just from a lifetime
of doing this.
I started off flying Cessnas.
I did that for several
years of my life.
I still do it.
I love it.
Fly sailplanes.
Still do it, love it.
And all the stuff that
you learn with this
has direct applicability to
the more advanced fighter
airplanes.
In fact, I'll tell you,
this is actually harder
to fly than the Raptor, and
we'll talk a little bit more
about that as we go through.
All right.
So more fun and games.
All right.
So now comes the class
participation part.
My talks are very interactive.
I love hearing what
you guys think.
So we'll do a quick
thought exercise.
I'll try and keep a mental
note because I stink
at writing on a chalkboard.
But we'll chat through this
just so you can understand
that there's really not that
much difference from what
you're learning now to go off
to do something like that.
So why does a Cessna look
the way that it does?
And why does a Raptor
look the way that it does?
What were the
engineers trying to do?
And just call them out.
No real-- go ahead, just shoot.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] Raptor.
RANDY GORDON: OK.
So explain.
AUDIENCE: You have way more
area that's clear [INAUDIBLE]
RANDY GORDON: So you
brought up two things.
One is the position
of the wing, right.
So in a Cessna, the
wings are obviously--
well, in a lot of airplanes,
really, not just Cessnas.
But in the Cessna,
the wings are directly
above you, big Hershey bar wing.
Why did they put the wings
this way in a Cessna?
[LAUGHTER]
You're doing great so far.
Keep going, man.
PROFESSOR: I'm going
to answer that.
Get in or out of a
Cirrus in heavy rain,
and you will immediately see
the value of that Cessna wing.
RANDY GORDON:
Yeah, they did this
so that my wife doesn't yell at
me in bad weather conditions,
so that you can get
inside the airplane
with not getting completely wet.
The other part
about the high wing
is it's great for
visibility, looking down.
Where this is terrible
is if you're turning
and you have to be able
to see through the wing
because you're kind
of doing the old--
looking over the side
to see out the outside.
So that's one
advantage over Raptor.
It's not a high wing or a--
it's kind of a mid wing,
if you will.
But that wing is well after
the cockpit for what reason?
AUDIENCE: Visibility.
RANDY GORDON: Visibility, yeah.
That's the big, huge reason why.
And then you also brought up
the idea of the swept wings.
Why the swept wings compared
to, say, straight wings?
AUDIENCE: Well, wouldn't they
have an aerodynamic advantage?
RANDY GORDON: OK.
What's that advantage?
AUDIENCE: Something
that [INAUDIBLE]
RANDY GORDON: Close.
I'll stop picking on you because
you're bold and went first.
Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: Mach.
RANDY GORDON: Yeah, Mach.
So explain Mach.
AUDIENCE: The closer you
get to the speed of sound,
the more compressibility
is important.
RANDY GORDON: Yep.
AUDIENCE:
Aerodynamically, the wing
really behaves like it's going
at the speed normal to leading
edge.
RANDY GORDON: Yeah.
So you ever see those
old, the first jet
airplanes that came out?
The wings on the
jet airplanes had
wings that looked exactly like
this, and that was a problem.
I'm going to do something I
said I wouldn't try to do,
but I'll try to do it.
So here's your swept wing.
Here's the arrows that
come over the wing.
And then what ends up
happening is, really
what you care about is
the air that's going over
top of the wing, that's normal
to the chord line of the wing
itself.
You know what I mean
when I say chord?
Just like this imaginary line.
So on a Hershey bar wing,
all of that air hits the wing
and it goes directly over top
of that chord line of the wing.
So like when we talked
about over here,
the wings have camber.
So what happens to the air as
it goes over top of any wing?
Doesn't matter if it's a
fighter wing or whatever else.
But what happens to the velocity
of the air as it goes over top?
It goes faster, right.
So if I'm already going
fast and air hits my wing
and goes over top of
my wing and goes faster
than the rest of
the airplane, that's
going to cause a problem when
you get to very high speeds
approaching Mach because what
ends up happening is you'll
get a shockwave
forming on that wing.
And the moment you get a
shockwave form in there, that's
like a big brick
wall to the wind
and that causes all
types of drag downstream,
slows down the airplane,
all types of things.
So what they found is
I can sweep the wing.
When I sweep the
wing, some of that air
is normal to the chord line.
So if this is the fuselage
over here, and here's the wing
and it comes back over
here, some of that air
is going to be that way,
and some of that air
is going to actually go out
and go span-wise, if you will,
like this.
So I'm trying to
draw this correctly
to get the right angles.
But you get my point.
So some of that
air goes span-wise.
Some of the reasons
why you have wing
winglets, right, to prevent
some of that drag that
happens at the winglets.
But then also what
you're worried about
is rather than the full
component of this wind,
you're only worried
about the wind
that's normal to the flow of the
way the chord line is set up.
So that's why they
sweep the wings.
OK.
So what else?
Why does a Cessna look this way?
Why does this look like that?
Go ahead.
Yeah, go ahead, both.
AUDIENCE: Stealth and
payload and [INAUDIBLE]..
RANDY GORDON: OK, so stealth.
Payload is an important thing.
Let's talk about the
payload for a second.
Actually, we'll
talk about stealth
since you brought it up.
So look at that
plan form, and what
do you notice with
regards to stealth?
AUDIENCE: It's all angles.
RANDY GORDON: All angles, right.
That angle, that
angle, that angle.
AUDIENCE: No right angles.
RANDY GORDON: Yeah,
no right angles.
So the reason is--
and I'll do my high
tech pizza aid here.
So who's Double E in here?
Anyone Double E for MIT?
OK.
So if you're a beam of
radar energy, you love this.
You love when you have a
nice flat thing directly
that reflects.
All that radar energy you put
at me goes right back at you.
Now what happens if
I take that panel
and I go like this a little bit?
So yeah, there's not so much.
Now I'll really
mess up your mind.
What happens if I do that?
And now you have to start
dealing with angles and edges.
The Raptor is this constant
fight between the Double E guys
and the aeronautical engineers.
When you make an
airplane like this
and you make angles
like this, and you
make it there's no right angles
or whatever else like that,
you're exactly right, it
greatly reduces the stealth.
Now, this is not Wonder
Woman's airplane.
It's not like you
just become invisible
and no one can see you.
But it's very, very
hard to see on radar.
But there's a challenge
in that because when
you make an airplane that looks
like this, which the Double E
guys tend to like,
the aeroengineer guys
tend to hate because it
makes the airplane unstable.
So we'll talk about that.
This airplane, very, very
stable, very, very stable.
OK.
What else?
A couple other things.
So why is the Raptor
look this way?
Why does the Cessna
look this way?
Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: I feel
like the Cessna is
designed to be produced with
cheap commodity materials.
The Raptor uses exotic metals.
RANDY GORDON: Yep, titanium,
whole types of stuff, right.
So this is an airplane
people buy commercially.
If you were Jeff
Bezos, you would never
purchase this airplane
because it is hyper expensive.
My jets were test
jets, which means
they were very different, almost
like hand-built custom F-22s.
Each one, $300 million
to $400 million a piece.
Scary in terms of how
much it actually costs.
The canopy on this thing,
probably worth more than about
10 of these all put together.
The payload part-- you
brought up payload, too.
So the other part about the
stealth, if you can see here,
I've got doors.
So there's a big main weapon
bay door, big 17-foot doors,
if you will.
And then there's doors on
the side that come open here.
Unlike a Cessna,
we talked about--
where did Tina go?
Oh, she disappeared.
The dropped object,
dropping pumpkins.
My pumpkins are 1,000
pounds, come off
the airplane just like that.
Different missiles and
different bombs or whatever.
The center of gravity
of the airplane
is right about
where my finger is.
And so these weapons that are
here, when I release them,
it's suddenly like dropping
a car off the front end
of your airplane.
And so there's a huge
center of gravity shift
that happens just like that.
And so the flight
controls need to be
able to compensate for
something like that.
Last piece I'll give you
just for sake of time
is, what's the speed
envelope, if you will,
that this airplane operates?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
RANDY GORDON: What's up?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
RANDY GORDON: Oh, I wish 200.
Man, I wish 200.
I would buy one right now if
I could go 200 in this thing.
AUDIENCE: About 160.
RANDY GORDON: Yeah,
on a good day.
You might get, if you get
a really, really high end
general aviation
airplane, 160 knots or so,
something like that.
You can get more than
that, but then you
start getting into some
real, like, Mercedes Benz
exotic class, general
aviation planes that
are like the Cirrus
that go beyond there.
In general, you're talking
somewhere between 80
and about 140, 150 for most of
them, or something like that.
Believe it or not, this
airplane can actually
fly as slow as a
Cessna, but it also
can fly two times
the speed of sound.
And it does that pretty
easily, believe it or not.
Also, this airplane,
60 degrees of bank
starts to get really extreme,
a little bit uncomfortable.
This airplane, fully
aerobatic, doesn't care.
Pulls 9 g's.
You guys know what g's are?
The accelerations of gravity.
So my human head-- well, MIT
heads weight about 20 pounds
or so, a little bit
more than the norm.
So at 9 g's, everything on your
body weighs nine times as much.
So that's 180 pounds.
Your neck has to be
able to support that.
Imagine everything
on this airplane
has to be stressed
such that it can
tolerate that load and more.
Also, it can go
negative g as well.
Altitude-wise, I
think the highest
I've ever had a Cessna
was about 14,000 feet.
And it was wheezing.
I mean, it was really, really
hard for it to get up there.
This airplane goes 0 feet all
the way up to about 60,000
to 65,000 feet.
So it flies twice as high
of what you would see
on your commercial airliners.
What I'm trying
to impress on you
is it's a huge flight envelope
with a very different solution
set compared to what you
might have on a Cessna.
The only other thing I
would say with Raptor is--
and this was something
that took me a while.
My first combat mission,
I really understood this.
In a Cessna, if I have
a problem, I can land
and most likely
people will come out
to help me and call home and
let everybody know I'm OK.
In bad guy land, if people
are coming to get me,
they really are
coming to get me.
So you're in very
hostile territory
where you do not want to
leave the airplane if you
can avoid it.
So there is a tremendous
amount of redundancy that's
built into this airplane.
We'll talk more through
that a little bit.
So anyway, you've essentially
derived all of the challenges
that a flight control engineer
would have to deal with.
Let's talk a little bit about--
I'll put this here just for
sake of making it easy to rest.
This airplane has what's called
reversible flight control
system.
What does that mean?
You guys talk about that yet?
Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: I think it's
basically [INAUDIBLE] or when
you move [INAUDIBLE]
RANDY GORDON: Yep.
So not only when
you move the stick.
What happens if you go outside
the airplane, grab the aileron,
move that up and down?
What happens inside?
AUDIENCE: The stick--
RANDY GORDON: The
stick moves, right.
So it's reversible.
I move the stick, and the flight
control surfaces will deflect.
Or I move the flight
control surfaces,
and the stick will deflect.
So they are directly connected
with pulleys and cables
to one another.
For the guys who have flown,
what does the airplane
feel like when you get to 100,
120, 130, 140 miles an hour?
I mean, what does it feel
like on the control surfaces?
AUDIENCE: Heavy.
RANDY GORDON: Yeah,
so it gets heavy,
it gets real stick
kind of heavy.
Same thing if you're slow,
everything gets kind of sloppy,
if you will, because
you are directly
feeling the air
loads on the airplane
as transmitted to the stick.
In this airplane, these
flight control surfaces,
this tail surface back
here is about the size
of a lot of fighter wings.
It's huge.
And you can imagine at
120, 130, the airplane
is really hard to really move.
Well, what happens if you're
going 1,000 miles per hour?
You could be Arnold
Schwarzenegger.
You do not have the strength to
maneuver these controls around.
So this airplane has a very,
very exotic hydraulic system
and a computer system and
an electric system that
allows all that to operate.
From the hydraulics,
I'm not kidding,
there's like 4,000 psi
of hydraulic fluid that
moves this whole thing around,
swings it back and forth.
From the electric
standpoint, now, again, this
is a reversible flight
control system, all manual.
The flight controls
in this airplane
don't work unless the electrics
are turned on to go do it.
So your flight controls
are electrically
controlled--
hydraulically powered
but electrically controlled.
Which is a little weird
when you think about it
because now all of a
sudden, electrical problems
in this airplane start
impacting your ability
to fly the airplane, which
gets a little bit strange.
You guys ever hear
of a thing called
a permanent magnetic generator?
Do you know what that is?
A little bit of
a technical term.
Who knows?
You know a lot.
Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: Is it a
type of generator that
uses permanent magnetic energy?
RANDY GORDON: Outstanding!
Yes, you have correctly
derived the definition
of a permanent
magnetic generator.
No.
The way it works
is this airplane
has six permanent
magnetic generators.
They are the primary source
of flight control power.
All that has to happen is
the engines have to rotate.
That's it.
So even if the
engines are shut down,
I can just keep wind
going through the engines
and they rotate,
they will rotate
sufficient to generate power
from the permanent magnetic
generators.
If those fail, the airplane
also has electrical generators
on board.
There's two of them--
there's actually
three of them on board.
They can power the
flight controls as well.
Worst case scenario for a Raptor
pilot, the engines seize up,
I lose my electrical power.
The only thing I have
left is a battery.
And just like anything
else with a battery,
the more you use it,
the more it depletes.
So at that point, any deflection
of the flight control surfaces
depletes the electrical energy
and you don't have that much
left to actually control it.
OK.
One last thing here and we'll
move on to the next slide.
We'll talk a little bit--
just some definitions.
The wing has this
thing on the front.
Do you know what that's called?
AUDIENCE: Leading edge.
RANDY GORDON: Leading
edge flaps, right.
OK, perfect.
All right.
What's that called?
AUDIENCE: Ailerons.
RANDY GORDON: Ailerons.
What did I hear?
I heard something else.
AUDIENCE: Flaperon.
RANDY GORDON: Ah.
Who said that?
OK.
Explain.
AUDIENCE: It's a combination
of both flap and aileron.
Flaps are on the outside,
ailerons are on the inside.
And-- no.
Did I get that backwards?
RANDY GORDON: Yep,
other way around.
AUDIENCE: Other way around.
And depending on which
[INAUDIBLE] of flight you're
in, you either have full use
of those control surfaces
or part of it is dedicated
to the flap and part of it
is dedicated to
being the aileron.
RANDY GORDON: Yeah.
Outstanding.
That's good.
And this airplane--
this airplane has what?
Ailerons, right.
So if I want to go right
and I move the yoke right,
what happens to the ailerons
here in this airplane?
Sorry, I'll put it that way.
That way, you're setting up.
So I'm going this way.
So this aileron is doing what?
AUDIENCE: It's going that way.
RANDY GORDON: Going
that way, right.
This aileron is doing what?
AUDIENCE: Up.
RANDY GORDON: Up, right.
So I'll cut to the chase.
These are ailerons, these are--
so these are the flaperons
here on the inside.
These are the ailerons.
In a Raptor, those aileron
deflect differentially.
So just like you
have in a Cessna,
they can also both
deflect up, they
can also both deflect down.
The flaps on the inboard are
flaps and ailerons-- flaperons.
So they can deflect up
and they can deflect down.
We'll show why that
brings up some neat stuff.
OK.
Rudder, obviously back here.
In this airplane, when
I push the rudder left,
the rudder deflects
left, I deflect right.
This has two rudders.
Both rudders can
deflect one way,
they can deflect the other way.
They can both deflect in,
and there's some reasons
why you'd want to do that.
And they can both deflect out.
The last piece I'll
give you is back here,
normally this would
be called an elevator,
but on a supersonic
airplane we call
these horizontal stabilizers.
If you guys have read the
story of the Bell X-1,
so Chuck Yeager when
he went supersonic--
we talked a little bit earlier
about supersonic shockwaves
forming on the airplane
as you start going fast.
What Chuck Yeager discovered
is that the elevator,
like in a traditional Cessna,
that horizontal stabilizer
does not move.
So the elevator
at the back moves,
but this part stays fixed.
That shockwave that
would form right here
would actually blank the
air back to the elevator,
and they wouldn't have
any pitch control.
So when they talk about
this thing called Mach tuck,
which was a scary,
scary thing that
happened to a lot of World
War II fighter pilots when
they got into a dive--
they would start forming
shockwaves on the airplane.
They didn't have the elevator
authority to pull up,
and so they would actually
nose dive all the way in
because they go faster and
faster and faster heading down.
The answer was rather
than the back end
of this thing maneuvering,
the entire surface moves.
So as a fighter
pilot, especially
when you got people walking
underneath the airplane
because they're maintainers,
they're working on things,
you always, always, always,
you show them your hands.
Because if you tap
that stick, again,
the stick is not directly
connected just like it is,
the stick's connected
to a computer.
The computer votes and it
allows things to happen.
It then commands a 4,000
hydraulic psi system to deflect
basically this big old wing.
You can actually
take a guy's head off
with the flight
control surfaces.
So you always, always
show your hands
whenever you have people
walking underneath the airplane
for that.
So it's got a very, very
advanced flight control
system on board.
We'll talk through a
little bit about what
advantages that gives you.
The last piece I'll
give you is the engines
at the back, which
are a thing of beauty.
I was a propulsion
guy, aeronautics
engineer kind of thing.
It's almost like modern
art masterpiece to me.
Those engines have
the ability to call
what's called thrust vectoring.
They'll swing up and
they'll swing down.
Where would you
want to use that?
Why do the engines
have thrust vectoring?
You've answered a lot today.
You're smart, though.
You know what's going on.
Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: Very low speeds.
RANDY GORDON: Very low speeds.
Outstanding, yep.
Where's another regime?
Think of the flight
envelope of the airplane.
AUDIENCE: Yeah,
very high altitude.
RANDY GORDON: Very
high altitude.
So why high altitudes?
AUDIENCE: A little lift
from the wings, or the wings
could be small so--
RANDY GORDON: Yeah, yeah.
Density goes way down as
you go up in altitude.
So if I deflect--
I mean, I have to
get more deflection
to move that air to be able
to move the airplane if I'm
relying just on the
aerosurfaces alone.
The way I get around that is
I put two 35,000 thrust pound
engines, if you will,
on board the airplane.
And just like a fire hose, if I
grab a fire hose and I move it,
you would feel that torque
on your body, the same thing
here with the thrust
vectoring on the back.
So with just the
movement of my hand,
I can deflect 70,000
pounds of thrust way
at the back end of the airplane.
So we talked about center of
gravity being right about here.
So that moment arm
of that thrust force
is all the way back here,
and I can deflect that up.
And at very, very low speeds,
where the flight control
surfaces might
not be doing well,
I can still move the airplane
just by using the thrust alone.
At high altitude,
where I don't have
a lot of density, same thing,
I can maneuver the airplane
just by using the thrust alone.
So where that helps you--
because, again, this
is a dog fighter.
Here's what happens, and you'll
see this from time to time.
So I'll do this
with a side look.
When I get to high
angle of attack,
so the wind is coming
like this and it's
hitting the bottom
surface of the airplane,
I don't have the ability
to really maneuver
a lot because sometimes some
aerosurfaces are blanked
by just the size of
that fuselage coming
right out into the wing.
So I cheat, if you will,
by using the engines to get
that final little pitch rate.
We'll see later on in
the Raptor demo video
where the airplane will go--
it's called a high alpha loop,
high angle of attack loop.
It'll go vertical-- rather
than doing a loop where
you see it prescribed
this whole path over here,
the airplane will go vertical.
I'll engage the thrust
vectoring, and it'll pivot.
So the velocity vector is
still heading straight up,
so the airplane is
still moving up.
But it kind of does
this gymnastics thing
where I've now turned
the airplane using thrust
vectoring, even though
the airplane is still
heading straight up.
It's wacky.
It's totally cool.
All right.
Let's talk through a
couple other things.
OK.
So that's the flight controls.
How we do in timeline?
OK.
We're looking pretty good.
Anyone recognize the
cockpit on your left?
AUDIENCE: F-15.
RANDY GORDON: F-15, yeah.
Outstanding.
Good.
This was my very first airplane.
I didn't know any better.
I sat down I said, wow,
what a cool cockpit.
Look at all this cool stuff.
Buttons everywhere and
switches all over the place.
This is an airplane of the '70s,
designed when Richard Nixon,
Jimmy Carter, that kind
of era, if you will--
very, very first intro to
solid state electronics.
Really wasn't fully
fleshed out at this stage.
This airplane had a
hydro mechanical system,
which meant that just
like in this airplane
where there were cables
and pulleys, a similar kind
of flight control
system in it there.
This picture is the Raptor's
cockpit on the inside.
Some pretty dramatic
differences between the two.
So again, just call them out.
What do you see?
AUDIENCE: Glass cockpit.
RANDY GORDON: Glass cockpit.
Where does that help you?
AUDIENCE: I say the
glass is cooler.
RANDY GORDON: Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: It can be display.
RANDY GORDON: What's up?
AUDIENCE: It can
be multi-display.
You can change it to--
RANDY GORDON: Oh, yeah.
It's great.
You can see these new
digital cockpit Mercedes Benz
and BMWs or whatever,
where in the old days
you just had speed
and tack, if you will.
Now you can configure
it however you want.
Now, the moment you start
putting that in there--
no, got it.
Yeah, the moment you
start doing stuff
like that, you start creating
a software airplane, which
gives you a lot of
flexibility and a danger.
We'll talk about that one
a little bit later on.
What else do you see
flight controls-wise
since we're talking mainly
about flight controls today?
AUDIENCE: Side stick.
RANDY GORDON: Side stick, yeah.
So right there is the
control stick in an F-15.
Sits directly
between your knees.
In a Raptor, that is
your control stick.
It's on the side.
Why would you ever
want to put something
like that on the side?
Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
RANDY GORDON: That's part of it.
That helps.
And there's actually--
you can't see it.
Here it's partly there, but
this little section here, it's
a foldout armrest.
So your wrist is on the stick.
Your elbow, if you will,
it's resting on an arm rest.
So it gives you a lot
of leverage from there.
That's one reason.
What's a couple
other reasons why
you'd want to go side
stick versus center stick?
AUDIENCE: Your legs get in
the way on the center stick.
RANDY GORDON: Legs
get in the way.
That's a big deal
because in this airplane,
you actually got pretty good
after while of flying it,
where if you really need
to maneuver the stick,
you kind of do the leg
up and kind of move
over that way to get
everything out of the way.
The other side about it, too, it
might not be quite so obvious,
but you see how that stick--
that's about where your
eye height would be.
You see how that
stick kind of gets
in the way of seeing
some of the instruments?
It's just sitting right there.
In a side stick, that's
completely off to the side
and all of this real
estate is completely open.
The other thing I'll give you,
again, just for sake of time,
it's a little bit
of a thought change.
When you have a
center stick, it's
like when you're driving a car.
And when you're parking--
you're trying to
park your car, you
want to be able to maneuver
that wheel around a lot.
But when you're
at highway speeds,
if you were to take the
wheel and maneuver it
that much again, you're
going to roll the car.
So in a center stick,
you move the stick around
to be able to deflect the
flight control surfaces.
There's a physical
displacement of the stick
to make that happen.
On a side stick, that stick,
initially when they first
put it in, did not move at all.
So imagine if you were in your
car and you wanted to steer,
and rather than the
wheel actually moving,
you just put pressure
on the wheel itself
and that was enough to transmit
to the computer in the car
to turn the wheels.
That was a problem initially,
which we can talk about
after the presentation.
That's a little bit of
a sidebar discussion.
This is a human factors thing.
It's a side stick.
Initially it didn't move.
Eventually they decided,
I'll put in some deflection.
So I can go a half inch
left, a half inch right,
about a quarter inch forward,
I go about a half inch back
because normally I really want
to get the nose going this way.
If I had that much
deflection forward,
I don't want to fly
the airplane this way.
So you have the
ability to do that.
But it gives you a little bit
of the best of both worlds.
There's some
deflection to give you
feedback that you've input
something on the stick,
but not so much
deflection that it
gets in the way of everything
else you're trying to do.
So there's a little bit of real
estate in the fighter cockpit.
The last piece I'll give
you, and it's a little bit
hard to see here, is all those
buttons there on the stick.
What you have the
ability to do-- so
it's exactly like modern car
steering wheels right now.
You can control volume, radio,
everything else like that,
you can do it from
the steering wheel.
Same thing in a fighter.
It's called hands-on
throttle and stick, HOTAS.
And it allows you to
control everything
that you would want
to do on the airplane
with never having
to leave your hands
from the throttle on the stick.
The other piece I'll give
you is that in a Raptor--
so in a fighter like
this, this is your stick,
this is your throttle.
In a Raptor, because
the flight control modes
can change so much, this
is your right inceptor
and this is your left inceptor.
It's all considered part of
the flight control system.
All right.
Let's keep going.
So just like on your car where
if you want to go to XM radio,
you go to media
source or whatever
and go XM satellite
radio, you have buttons
because it's a software-driven
jet, just like we saw before,
and I can pull up a flight
control display that
shows me the position of all
my flight control surfaces.
Again, the pilot is way
forward on the front end
of this airplane.
As I deflect things, sometimes
I can't actually see them.
And so initially, this
was a flight test display
so that I don't have to do
the old poltergeist thing
and try to rotate
all the way around
to be able to see to the
back end of the airplane
to see if the elevators moving.
I basically instrument
everything and I
can see it here.
Now, some of the
human factor stuff
that's kind of cool
with how they did this--
so again, this tells you, at
the top, rudder deflection
surfaces, ailerons, where the
horizontal stabilizers are at,
how the engines are doing.
This is a little weird.
I don't really like
how they did this one,
but this is the leading edge
flaps, LE flaps, the leading
edge flaps.
So it just shows you how far
they're deflected, dug in,
dug down.
On the lower left-hand corner,
it shows you center of gravity.
So there's limits.
Just like what
you would normally
do on flight planning
for your Cessna--
hey, I can only put this much
fuel with this much passengers,
and I've got to be within
this limit for takeoff,
for landing and everything else,
the airplane tells you that.
Now, what's cool about
some of the things they've
done in Raptor is that
if it's out of limits,
again, it doesn't expect you
to get out the piece of paper
with the whiz wheel and the E6B.
It just changes color.
It goes red and it gives you a
warning that says, hey, idiot,
you are beyond the
aft center of gravity.
No gauge tells you it's
just having a hard time
seeing where all the fuel
is and everything else.
That's a different story.
But it tells you what percentage
of mean aerodynamic chord
that you're sitting at and it's
able to adjust stuff around.
So I'll give that to you
because what this allows is--
oh, by the way, the last
part here is flight control--
so in other words, this tells
you where you moved your stick
and it tells you trim.
So you know where
the trim is set,
and it also tells you
where the stick is set.
So you know your inputs
that go through there.
When you have a
software-driven machine,
you can customize things
and make it very simple.
You guys have seen that
terrible, terrible awful movie
Top Gun, right?
It's just awful, right?
So that scene where
Maverick loses his engines
and they go through this, engine
one is out, engine two is out,
and they go on this flat spin
to sea, which is a bunch of BS.
When you're in a spin, you
don't translate over the ground,
you fall straight down.
So this whole flying out
to sea thing is ridiculous.
It doesn't happen that way.
If you don't have a
software-driven airplane,
when you lose engines like that,
then you've got to go through
this whole--
for instance, in the Cessna,
if you lose the motor,
what do you got to do?
Establish your glide, get
everything set up, check to see
am I my left, right, or
both on the fuel source,
what's my whatever, blah, blah,
blah, and everything else.
In the Raptor it's the most
awesome thing possible,
you literally do nothing.
You sit there and the computer
goes, oh, you've lost a motor.
I've noticed that
you have a problem.
Let me see if I can help
you, and it will restart
the motor for you if it can.
If it can't restart
the motor, chances
are it ain't going to restart
and you can leave it shut down,
if you will.
It allows some neat
human factor designs
because in this airplane-- in
the Raptor, believe it or not,
when you're flying
the Raptor, you're
not thinking about
flying the Raptor.
You're thinking about
employing the Raptor.
So you're trying to find
where all of your wing mates
are, where the bad guys
are, et cetera, et cetera.
Flying is secondary.
Whereas in this plane,
flying is everything.
So they tried to
as much as possible
alleviate the pilot from as
much burden of responsibility
of thinking about flying
the airplane by doing
neat little tricks like that.
The other thing I'll give you
too about the flight controls
is, again, we talked about
how ailerons can go up,
ailerons can come down,
flaperons go up, they go down,
rudders come out and go down.
On takeoff mode, I'll show
you something kind of cool.
So here's the nose look on here.
On takeoff mode,
without any input
from the pilot-- so there's
no flap switch in the cockpit,
there's no leading edge,
there's nothing like that.
It just knows, based
on the fact that you've
got the gear handled down and
that you're on the ground,
that it senses the weight
on wheels, it thinks,
this guy wants to take off.
So the rudders will
both deflect inward.
Why would you do that?
Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
RANDY GORDON: So not quite.
There is a tie between the
flight controls, though.
So in other words,
if I take the rudders
and I tow them both in, so
both rudders are deflected in,
what does that do from an
aerodynamic standpoint?
Which way's the nose going to go
if these rudders are deflected
in?
AUDIENCE: Up.
RANDY GORDON: Up, right.
So it makes it easier to
rotate the airplane on takeoff
because the rudders
are deflecting in.
Both of them go in.
The other part about it too is--
so we talked about this.
You guys ever see a
competition aerobatic,
one of those extra
300 kind of airplanes?
See how the aileron
runs the entire length
of the whole wing?
So the pilot, all they got
to do is just tap the wing
and the airplane is going to
do corkscrews and spirals.
On a Raptor, that's
part of the reason
why the aileron and the
flaperon can move together
as one surface.
And so the leading
edge flaps will dig in.
The trailing aileron and
the trailing edge flap,
that will dig in as well.
So on takeoff, with no
input from the pilot,
whereas the wing normally
would look like this
with a little bit of
camber on it, on takeoff
the wing looks like this.
It's kind of cool like when
you look at from the side.
So if you're looking at
it from directly side on,
that leading edge flap
comes down, these come down.
That puts in a whole bunch
of camber on the wing,
and it generates a lot of lift.
And again, that's completely
independent of the pilot.
The pilot has done nothing
other than just tell it,
I'm on the ground because
the gear handle is down.
PROFESSOR: Laz, what would
be a typical rotation speed?
RANDY GORDON: Yeah.
So that's a good question.
What do you guys think?
So I start on the runway.
By the way, I need
8,000 feet of runway.
This whole 2,500 feet is not
for a Raptor, unfortunately.
8,000 feet of runway.
But by the time I actually
get ready to pull back
on that stick to rotate, how
fast do you think it's going?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
RANDY GORDON: Little close.
150 is the usual--
so about take off--
which, by the way,
this airplane is about
34, 35 tons on takeoff,
compared to 2,500
pounds or whatever.
So it's a very heavy airplane.
It's got to get a
lot of speed to be
able to get that rotation.
But it's about 150,
160 knots on takeoff,
which is faster than the never
exceed speed of the Cessna,
as it goes.
But yeah, so the flight
controls are there to help you.
The other thing
I'll show you too
is there is-- so
sailplane guys--
where are my sailplane guys?
Anyone fly sailplanes?
So on the left in a
sailplane cockpit,
you typically have a lever for
the speed brakes, spoilers,
so these big surfaces
that pop up on the wing
to slow the airplane
down to just glide slopes
and those sorts of things.
We talked a little
bit earlier about
how the electrical
engineer guys want
this thing to be completely
stealthy and whatever else.
The last thing you want to do,
based on the discussion we just
had, is I don't want to
have a big board stick up
in the middle of this
airplane because that's
going to make my radar
reflection go very, very large.
So they did something
kind of remarkable.
They used the flight
control surfaces themselves
as the speed brakes.
So if I need to slow
the airplane down,
I hit a little switch
on the throttle.
And immediately what happens
is the leading edge flaps will
come down a bit, the
ailerons will both go up,
the rudders will go out,
so they'll both tow out.
And it's using that to help
slow the airplane down.
It's actually quite effective,
which is pretty cool.
All right.
A couple other things
we'll go through.
Landing mode.
Pilot's done nothing.
Touchdown, throttles are
back, gear handle's down,
and all of this stuff happens.
Here, let me get
this zoomed in here.
So that's the aileron.
It's up.
Holy crap.
The other one's up, too.
The flaperon goes
up on either side.
The rudders, you
can see how they're
both kind of towing
in there a little bit.
The reason it's
doing that is it's
trying to transfer all of
that weight from the wings
and put it into the gear.
So it's trying to kill all
of the lift on the wings
and transfer that
to the landing gear
so that you have the maximum
traction on the wheels
as you hit the brakes
as you slow down.
Also, on refueling-- so
when you go air refueling,
there's a little switch
that you open in the jet.
That opens up this door.
That tells the jet
that I'm getting
ready to refuel
while I'm airborne.
When it does that,
it says, this guy
isn't trying to dogfight
the airplane anymore.
They're trying to get gas.
So therefore I don't need
all the full roll capability
and everything else, and
really, what I really
want is an airplane
that's really
responsive with its lift.
And so, again, no input from
the pilot, but the leading edge
flaps will deploy down,
the trailing edge flap
and the ailerons will
also deploy down.
Again, they're trying to
create camber on that wing.
This is all digital
flight controls.
No input from the
pilot whatsoever.
PROFESSOR: Laz, what would
a typical airspeed be
when doing this air refueling?
RANDY GORDON: This is
about-- oops, sorry.
Let me go back one here.
This is about 300 knots or
so, something like that.
You've got to be able to
fly-- so for a Raptor, that's
kind of slow.
For the tanker airplane,
that's somewhat fast.
So you're trying to
find that marriage where
both airplanes have
good flying qualities
so that one's not about to
stall and the other one's
in full power trying
to catch up to him.
By the way, the
most unnatural act
I've ever done as
a fighter pilot
is to connect up my airplane
to another airplane.
I just never got used to it.
I can do it just fine,
but the whole notion
of this big boom connecting
my airplane to a big airliner
was just really strange
and weird to me.
Never got used to it.
OK.
Some of the limiters.
So in an F-15, because we talked
to that a little bit earlier,
you can get up to 500,
600 miles an hour.
You can take both
hands on the stick,
you can pull that
stick all the way back,
and you will rip the wings off
the airplane and you will turn
it into a big ball of metal
cascading down to the ground
because you have
over-g'ed the airplane.
Again, that awful, terrible
movie Top Gun in which
Tom Cruise departs the
airplane and gets into a spin,
again, you've exceeded some
capability of the airplane
and the airplane departs
controlled flight
and gets into some type
of uncontrolled situation.
On a Raptor, there used to be
in the pilot operating manual
a little blurb that said
quote you can maneuver
this airplane with
quote reckless abandon,
and you will not
over g the airplane,
you will not depart the
airplane from controlled flight.
They did a spectacular
job allowing this airplane
to get right to the
edge of performance
but not going over the top.
So one of the neat
things that they did--
airplane is in a left-hand turn.
Look at that aileron.
It's up.
Look at that aileron.
It's up.
What the crap is going on there?
And if you know
this one, you really
do get the model
because I didn't
know this for a long time.
So again, just for
sake of time because I
know we've got guys
coming in afterwards,
center of gravity of the
airplane sits right here.
In your engineering
classes you always
talk about forces acting
on the center of gravity.
And you take this whole
airplane and you model it down
to a point mass and
you say that's--
for sake of all the
sum of forces analysis.
Well, in real life this
airplane's about 43 feet wide.
Yeah, you can sum the
forces through there,
but there's forces acting
all over this airplane
at different spots.
Think about here on the wingtip.
I put g on the airplane.
And this wing tip, it's
almost like the wings want
to bend up as I'm coming down.
So you put a lot of stress
out on the wing tips.
So their answer,
quite ingeniously,
was to deflect the
ailerons down when
you're at high maneuvering.
The way you know you're
at high maneuvering
is you can kind of see these
little wispies forming off
the wingtips.
So you are creating
low pressure.
That's another one, too.
You can see the clouds forming
on the front edge of the wing.
Low pressure causes
that air to condense,
and so you make clouds.
So you know the airplane's
really maneuvering up.
And an answer to reduce
stress at the wingtips
was to deflect the ailerons up.
What happens to the lift out at
the wingtips with the ailerons
up?
Goes down, right?
So it helps to push
those wings back
down again so you're not trying
to overstress the airplane.
There are limiters like
this all over the airplane,
such that you won't
over g the airplane.
Literally, you can do anything
you want to this airplane.
That's what I'm telling you,
it's easier to fly a Raptor
than it is to fly a
Cessna because you really
have to pay attention to what
you're doing in a Cessna.
In a Raptor, I could
put my kid in there
and he can do this all day at
whatever speed, and nothing bad
will happen to the airplane.
It's really quite spectacular
how they did that.
The other part
I'll give you here
is some of the command systems.
So if I'm in a dogfight and I'm
trying to shoot the other guy,
I'm going against a
maneuvering target.
And so the flight
controls transfer over
to what's called a
g command system.
So if I'm maneuvering at 4
g's and I let go of the stick,
the airplane will stay at 4 g's.
And if I see that the target's
maneuvering and I need
to go to 6 g's or 7
g's, I'll put that in
and the airplane will keep that.
So in other words,
again, it's a vote.
I'm not physically
connected to anything.
I talk to the computer
and I say, I want 6 g's.
And the airplane does all types
of black magic and sorcery
behind me, and Lo and behold,
the airplane gets to 6 to 7
g's.
That really matters when
you're in a high maneuvering
kind of situation,
so it goes g command.
When you're slower,
i.e. on landing,
and I want to put that flight
path marker right on that edge
of the runway because that's
where I want to touch down,
right at the 1,000-foot
markers, then in that scenario,
I'm not really caring
so much about g command,
I care about pitch rate.
And so it transitions over
to a pitch rate command.
And if I put no
input on the stick,
it says zero pitch rate,
again, black magic and sorcery
will happen behind me.
The flight controls
will do whatever
they need to do to make sure
that my pitch rate stays
at zero.
So it transitions from one
type of light control system
to the other.
No pilot input whatsoever.
It's just based off of
flight command system.
All right.
So let's talk through a couple
of the implications of that,
and then we'll go to
questions at the end.
Can you do the flight control
video Raptor at the top?
It's about a minute.
And then bring it up to
full screen and hit pause.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Got to love that music.
Stop.
[END PLAYBACK]
Thank you.
PROFESSOR: OK.
This one is full
speed and pause.
RANDY GORDON: OK.
And can you go back to the
beginning on it real quick?
OK.
So video in cockpit facing
out to the display screens
is a big no-no because
you could see stuff.
So we won't even
bother with that.
But what they did, this is the
Raptor Flight Demonstration
Team.
This is out of Langley
Air Force Base Virginia.
They mounted a camera in
the cockpit facing aft.
What I love about
this is, again, you
can see real quick what's
going on with the airplane.
So again, the
leading edge slats,
there's no input from the pilot
other than just maneuvering.
They'll deploy
wherever they need to.
You'll see the
horizontal stabilators
And if you're close,
you can actually
see what the ailerons
are doing and what
the flaperons are doing.
A neat trick, and
we'll see this as they
go into this high g demo.
Do you guys know about--
this gets a little bit
advanced, but a thing
called static margin,
which is a stability
thing about this airplane.
Again, this airplane, in its
bare airframe configuration,
no hydraulics, no computers,
nothing on board the airplane,
totally unstable.
What keeps it stable
is the computer itself.
What you'll see is you'll
see this maneuver where
he'll go into a
g turn and you'll
see all those clouds forming on
the back end of the airplane.
Pay attention to what the
leading edge flaps are doing.
They're digging in.
The horizontal
stabilators, you'll
see them initially move
to get the turn going,
but then once
established in the turn,
the way it's
controlling things is
it's moving around
the aerodynamic center
and the center of gravity.
It's doing that
by dorking around
a bit with the lift
on the wing, and it's
doing that by deflecting
the leading edge flaps.
So that flight control surface
display I showed you earlier,
the horizontal stabilators
would be completely streamlined.
And all of the maneuvering is
coming from the wing itself,
which is pretty amazing.
PROFESSOR: Next video?
RANDY GORDON: No, no.
Go to flight controls.
We'll watch that.
PROFESSOR: Go back, then?
RANDY GORDON: Yep,
and then we'll just
watch as it goes through, this
time without the funky club
music, I guess, hopefully.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[INAUDIBLE]
The horizontal stabilators
are streamlined.
[INAUDIBLE] Incidentally,
watch the flight controllers
in the back.
AUDIENCE: Oh, man.
We need somebody better here.
RANDY GORDON: I know, totally.
[LAUGHTER]
So at that speed, again,
it's the g command system.
The pilot is commanding
a certain g rate.
And miner deflections are
happening all the way here back
along the back edge
of the airplane.
The pilot has no input on that.
The system is doing everything
possible to command that g
that the pilot has asked for.
You'll see one
other maneuver here.
Pause for a second.
So what this maneuver is is--
and again, slow speed.
Airplane's going straight up,
and what they're trying to do
is basically pitch
forward completely and get
the airplane-- so it's almost
like you're flying an L,
like you're going
straight up and then you
want to pitch forward
and then accelerate out
horizontally that way.
The way gets that is through
that thrust vectoring that
happens.
But as that maneuver
happens, again, all the pilot
is doing is just doing a direct
push forward on the stick.
Watch what happens
to all the flight
controls in the
back of the airplane
to keep that airplane going
exactly where the pilot wants
it to.
Play.
So you'll see huge
deflections out
of that horizontal stabilizer.
It's kind of neat.
You can keep playing.
So what you're seeing
there is, from the outside
of the airplane-- we'll
see this more on the demo--
is the airplane is essentially
pirouetting in the sky.
So it's falling straight down,
but it's very controllable.
It's flying at speeds about
60 to 65 miles an hour,
but very, very controllable.
And you'll see every bit
of flight control surface
on the back end of this
airplane deflecting
to do what it needs to do.
So don't think of it in
terms of aileron, elevator.
It's a little bit fluid when
it comes to a Raptor's stuff.
Stuff happens back there.
PROFESSOR: Touch and go video?
RANDY GORDON: OK, so this
shows a little bit of-- yeah,
you can go ahead and play that.
And hit pause for a second.
We'll just do the setup.
OK.
So very quick, the setup
for this video, this
is the downside of a digital
flight control system.
Because on this
airplane, again, it's
pure cables, pulleys,
it's ratios and gears
and stuff like that.
On this airplane,
it's software code.
It's zeros and ones, and
you better get it right.
And everything is
interconnected.
We talked about how
moving the gear handle
tells the flight control
system something different.
If I open the air
refueling door,
it tells the flight control
something different.
In this case, the power
setting of the airplane
tells the airplane
something different.
One of my good friends,
test pilot, outstanding guy.
So don't think of this
as he's a bad pilot.
He's not, he's awesome.
But the jet believes
something that
wasn't really true because
there was an error in how
the software was coded.
And you'll see the
first approach--
he'll take off again on
what's called military power,
so they're not
using afterburner,
and the airplane
behaves just fine.
The next time around, he goes
around using afterburner power,
so you'll see fire come out of
the back end of the airplane.
And that changes something
in the flight system
for the engines, which
tells the flight control
computer a different condition.
And what ended up happening is
that the gains, if you will,
of the stick were
completely off.
So again, this would be like
if you were on a highway speed
and that same wheel
deflection you would
use to park your car
in your garage, now
that little deflection
of your wheel
makes that same turn
of the tires up front.
So you get into what's called a
pilot-induced oscillation, PIO,
which basically says you're
out of phase with the airplane.
If I'm driving my car and I
turn the steering wheel right,
the car is going left.
As it's going left, I'm
trying to correct, I go right,
and now the thing goes right.
And so you get out of
phase with the airplane,
and you'll see what happens.
Go ahead and play.
By the way, you see all
the flight control surfaces
deflecting in the back?
This is now in a
pitch rate system.
So he's just trying
to land the airplane.
The back of the
airplane does whatever
it needs to do to keep that
flight path marker exactly
where it needs to go.
And again, all the flight
control surface is deflected.
Military power because the
engines are black, if you will,
on this one.
On the next time
around, you'll see
him maneuver with
afterburner, and you'll
see him get into this
pitch-induced oscillation.
That's the chase
airplane, by the way.
It's an F-16 that
follows them around.
So same thing, getting
set up to land.
The camera goes out of
focus here for a second,
comes back in.
Again, just notice
everything that's
happening on the back
end of this airplane
to keep that pitch rate where
the pilot has commanded it to.
Two things will happen here.
He selects afterburner
and he raises the gear.
That changes the
flight control laws.
And the gains were
not set correctly.
There's the afterburner.
And now you see where he's out
of phase with the airplane.
And he's doing everything to
keep the airplane from hitting
the ground, and can't avoid it.
He's OK, but the airplane
was fairly well scraped,
as you can imagine.
So it's just a danger.
The digital flight
controls allow a lot
of flexibility and creativity.
There used to be a term,
eh, it's only software,
we can figure it out.
Not true when you're dealing
with vehicles like this,
where small changes
in software code
can have dramatic implications
on the ability of the airplane.
So it takes an
amazing amount of--
PROFESSOR: Demo?
RANDY GORDON: Yeah, you can
go ahead and do Raptor demo.
And with that, we
can go questions
because I'm a little bit over.
PROFESSOR: No, it's fine.
RANDY GORDON: OK.
So we can play this full
screen, if you will.
PROFESSOR: You want to take
questions while it's running?
RANDY GORDON: Yeah.
So this is from
another good buddy
of mine, a guy
name Zeke Skalicky,
who was the Raptor demo pilot.
Outstanding guy.
But this is the Raptor demo
if you've never seen it.
So we'll take some questions
while this is going.
Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: Is there a thrust
to weight ratio on an F-22?
RANDY GORDON: Yeah,
greater than one to one.
So the airplane, about
63,000, 64,000 pounds.
Normally a strong takeoff.
The thrust coming out the
back is 70,000 pounds.
So on a nice cold
day, like if you're
close enough to sea level,
you will actually go faster
than the speed of sound
while you're climbing up,
which is cool.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: What is the thrust
vectoring while taking off?
PROFESSOR: Laz, try to--
oh, yeah.
Try to repeat the
question if you can.
RANDY GORDON: Oh, sorry.
PROFESSOR: Because
he's not mic'ed.
RANDY GORDON: So
the question was--
well, one, the question was
the thrust to weight ratio.
It's greater than one to
one-- a little bit greater
than one to one on takeoff.
By the way, watch this
maneuver here real quick.
So that's the thrust
vectoring kicking
in to really get the airplane--
so initially it has the flight
control surfaces.
And then as things slow
down, the thrust vectoring
kicks in to basically turn the
airplane into a flat plate.
Second question was about the
thrust vectoring on takeoff.
So it'll put it a little bit up,
not much, just a little bit up
to help the nose
rotate just a tad.
This is that high angle of
attack maneuver, if you will.
Keep going.
It's all good questions.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: You said all the
software is written basically
so the plane can't
damage itself.
Does the pilot become a limiter?
Can it put you in situations
where it can hurt you?
RANDY GORDON:
Yeah, very much so.
In fact, we've kind of
achieved that spot now,
where the pilot very
much is limiting
the performance of the airplane
itself because the airplane
could do so much more.
So this is what's called a
fifth generation fighter.
The first generation was like
an old Korean War, like F-86
kind of airplane.
And then successively
through the generations,
you arrive at this
fifth generation,
which to me is the
pinnacle of what
you could get with a human
and an airplane together.
Sixth generation is going to
involve teaming this airplane
with unmanned airplanes,
and the unmanned airplanes
are going to have a lot more
capability from a maneuvering
standpoint because
they don't have
the limitation of the
pilot and all the life
support systems that come
with it and everything else.
So all that weight you would
normally devote to that,
you can get away with
putting other stuff in there.
When I was telling you it
flies at about the same speed
as a Cessna--
I mean, this is those
types of maneuvers
there where you can
get away with that.
Again, watch the flight
control surfaces in the back
and what's going on.
Later on they'll do a pass
where he'll open up the doors
and you can see the main
weapon bay, which is
underneath the airplane belly.
And then you'll see the
side weapon bay doors,
so you can kind of see
where all the weapons are
carried inside the airplane.
Again, a huge center
of gravity challenge.
So here's that maneuver there.
You can see the doors open.
One thing I didn't
really tell you about
is, so in that such
situation, because missiles
weigh a couple hundred pounds a
piece or so, some of the bombs
are about 1,000 pounds apiece,
when you lose all that weight
immediately, it's
literally like dropping
a car off the front
end of your airplane.
The way that it fixes that
center of gravity issue
is by changing fuel
inside the airplane.
So it sloshes fuel
forward or back
to keep the center of gravity.
Again, there's no
fuel control panel
where I go, well, move this
and click this and whatever.
It does it all
completely automatically.
Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: What kind
of sensors can you
use to detect the
center of gravity?
RANDY GORDON: The
sensors that you can use?
So all of the fuel
tanks are instrumented,
so you know the status
of fuel in terms
of where things are set up.
You tell it-- well,
actually, it has the ability
to know what's on the airplane.
So when you load a
missile, it goes,
oh, it's this type of missile
and it weighs this much,
and it knows the
mass properties of it
and so it sets it up from there.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
RANDY GORDON: So it actually
identifies that all by itself.
So like in a Cirrus, you
have to actually pull up
a screen in the Cirrus and
go, my passenger weighs this
and I've got this
baggage on board,
and then it gives you
the picture of where
the center of gravity is.
This thing, because
it's all digital,
the missile has a little
connector rod that connects it
and it says, behold,
I'm a missile.
AUDIENCE: What about
the pilot weight?
RANDY GORDON: Oh,
the pilot weight?
Doesn't matter because
they spec'ed it--
well, it matters but
for a different reason.
It matters for the ejection
seat, predominantly.
Because the ejection seat--
I think it's like 135
pounds is the lightest,
something like that, 115 to
135 to, like, 220 or something.
It's something around that spot.
So to be able to be within the
safe envelope of the ejection
seat, that's where the
weight of the pilot matters.
But they spec the center
of gravity such that
so long as really
anyone can sit up front
and you're not going to throw
off the CG of the airplane,
even though you're way
far forward of the CG
and there's a moment arm there.
But between everything
else in the cockpit,
that ejection seat is
ridiculously heavy.
And all the avionics that sit
up front, the radars up front,
all these things
that sit up there
have far more of a contribution
to the center of gravity
than you do, unless you're,
like, Shaq or something
like that.
But go ahead.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
on the helmet screen?
RANDY GORDON: So in
this airplane, not yet.
That's coming along soon.
Some of the older airplanes,
believe it or not, have that.
Like the F-15 that I flew,
you had a special helmet
that had all of the information
displayed on the visor itself.
So in addition to that hands-on
throttle and stick so I don't
have to take my
hands off of anything
to touch anything
in the cockpit,
I also don't have to
look in the cockpit
to see altitude,
air speed, heading.
It's all displayed
to me upfront.
This airplane eventually
will get that.
This is a programmatic
discussion now.
They only had so many dollars
to spend, and they said,
this airplane is so
awesome that it shouldn't
need a helmet-mounted display
system because it should
be able to see all the bad
guys from far enough away
and not be a problem.
We fielded the
airplane that way.
The first batch of
pilots, they all
transitioned from airplanes that
had that helmet-mounted system.
And they came to this airplane
where it didn't have it,
and they were pissed.
They were like, we've
got to have that back.
So that's kind of where
a lot of the efforts
now are going to modernize
the airplane a bit.
What else?
Good questions.
Go ahead.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: Why is there a need
for humans in the cockpit?
Why not just go for
unmanned systems?
RANDY GORDON: Yeah, it is the
great debate of the fighter
community right now.
You're really touching on
something really, really deep.
The best answer so far
is that the greatest--
I mean, we talked a lot about
the hardware and the systems
on board the airplane.
Really, the greatest piece
of capability on the airplane
is the mind of the
person flying up front.
If it's a very dynamic
and changing environment,
to be able to tell a machine
to be able to incorporate all
those inputs and make the
right decisions based on that,
kind of hard to do right now.
I'm not saying we're not going
to get there, just right now,
it's difficult.
Where we use unmanned
systems a lot
now is in surveillance
missions, where
you can just launch the thing.
And it's got a
pre-programmed navigation,
and it knows what it needs to
do and it can set things up.
Those are somewhat
bounded problems,
is probably the best
way to describe it,
where you could use an
unmanned system for that.
Where it gets difficulties
is in combat situation,
it's extremely dynamic.
It's battle royale,
WWF, mosh pit,
any possible chaotic
situation you can put,
that's kind of
what it looks like.
And so having a human mind
attached in that environment,
to be able to adapt and do
what the mind does better
than a machine does,
at least right now,
that's the main argument to keep
humans in the system for now.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] operate
these planes [INAUDIBLE]
to remotely operate
them, is the [INAUDIBLE]??
RANDY GORDON: It is.
PROFESSOR: Can you
repeat the question?
RANDY GORDON: Yeah, the question
is that if you operate these
things remotely--
so even if you had--
classic example, we'll
use Sully Sullenberger
because we talked about
Sully in the previous one.
You take off out of LaGuardia,
you lose both engines.
If you could have a remote pilot
sitting somewhere else that
could take over and
decide land on the Hudson,
because a machine most likely
wouldn't have made that choice,
is there a time lag issue?
The answer is 100% yes.
There is a time lag
issue between getting
that information displayed
down, make the input,
that input goes back
up and comes back over.
A thing we've done at
test pilot school is--
remember we showed earlier
that flight path marker,
where as a pilot you put
the flight path marker
and that's exactly where
your airplane's going to go?
If there's a time lag, that
will actually mess you up
because there's some second
or two delay between what
you're seeing and what the
airplane's actually going.
At test pilot
school, they actually
built a flight path marker that
accounts for that time delay.
If it knows that time delay,
it will actually count for it.
So you could fly the airplane
remotely even with the time lag
and still be able to do very
high gain tasks, like land
the airplane, for
instance, where things
are changing very rapidly.
So it's a new science, not
fully fleshed out here.
But the proof of
concept has been
demonstrated, to control
an airplane remotely even
with the time lag.
Who really cares
about that right now
are the airlines because,
to be very frank,
the pilots tend to be a pain
in the butt for an airline
company.
And if you can remove
the pilots and just
have a remote operated system
or even an autonomous system,
from a business
standpoint, the company
really likes that from
an aviation standpoint.
It triggers all
types of discussions
in a lot of other issues,
but that's one question.
Go ahead.
PROFESSOR: Let me jump in
for a minute with that.
I think actually to me, one of
the holy grails of GA safety
would be to have a
human co-pilot, perhaps,
on the ground.
So if you had that
kind of telemetry
that you have in a drone, a
human somewhere else could say,
you're running a
little short on fuel
or you forgot to change
tanks, all the things
that a human co-pilot could
do right in the cockpit.
Most of that safety
running checklist
could be probably
enhanced remotely.
So that would be a great add
to a Cessna, or a Piper, even.
RANDY GORDON: And
you see a little bit
now in some of the more
advanced airplanes,
like we talked a
little bit about if I
have an engine problem in the
Raptor, I literally do nothing.
I just sit there and
stare at the clouds
and go, wow, what a lovely
day, and the computer
fixes it for me.
There are other scenarios
where the jet will tell me,
hey, you've got a
generator problem
and then immediately pull up
the checklist for the generator
failure to allow me to fix it.
So you see some basic automation
right now already in play.
A couple other questions.
I know we're running short.
Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: How much of flying
a Raptor is seat of the pants
that you would miss by
not being in the cockpit?
RANDY GORDON: By
not being there?
AUDIENCE: Or is it so automated
at this point that it's
the same whether you're sitting
there or at a computer screen?
RANDY GORDON: Yeah, if it's a--
so we have two terms.
One is called beyond
visual range, which
means I can't see the
other guy with my eyes,
but my sensors can see him.
And if I'm shooting missiles
long distance like that,
I don't lose any seat of
the pants by being remotely.
It's like a video game.
Literally, it's exactly
like a video game.
If it's a maneuvering
environment where I see the guy
and we're in a
dogfight, then yeah,
you lose a lot in terms
of seat of the pants,
eyeball, just things that
are hard to automate.
So it's half and half.
In a drone scenario,
would a drone dogfight?
I don't know.
It's a good question.
I'm not really sure.
Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
RANDY GORDON: You
could, but then I'd
have to have some
way to represent
the physical environment
that the drone is seeing.
I've got to be able
to represent that
to the guy in the
simulator on the ground.
I have to be able to
relay that real time.
It matters.
So who play sports?
Guys, any of you?
Whenever you're playing
sports, you've got an opponent.
If you play it a lot, like if
it's racquetball or football
or something like
that, you get very
good at looking at
your opponent and being
able to see micro movements
before the actual big movement
happens, so that you know, oh,
they're about to swing this way
or they're going
to throw this way.
So you can read your
opponent and make a decision
about what's about to happen
a second or two from now.
In a fighter jet,
the exact same thing.
If I'm fighting a guy and I see
a control surface deflection,
even before the
airplane is gone,
I know the person
is going this way,
I can position myself to be
there before they arrive.
I would need some way
to represent that if I'm
in a simulator on
the ground, and it
would have to be transparent to
the guy in the simulator what
that feels like.
Go ahead.
Lots of good questions.
This is a good class.
PROFESSOR: Let me
ask, actually, who's
here from the Flying Club?
Sebastian.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
PROFESSOR: Yeah, actually,
I wonder if, Laz,
can you stay another
10, 15 minutes?
RANDY GORDON: Sure, absolutely.
PROFESSOR: Why don't we
have Sebastian jump in,
give his Flying Club spiel,
and then both of them
will be up front for
questions right afterwards.
Thank you, Laz.
RANDY GORDON: No worries.
[APPLAUSE]
