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The Mirage 2000 is a somewhat different beast than the first Mirages which were designed during the fifties. Like most modern day fighters, it too uses secondary FBW control systems though the system being currently tested aboard the Jaguar will ultimately find its way into the British EAP and French EFA fighter demonstrators.
Developing A New Breed Of Agile Fighter
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Controlling tomorrow’s agile fighters
The Jaguar demonstrator aircraft developed by British Aerospace is proving the control systems for the next generation of agile fighters. Ed Daley describes the development of this aircraft which combines flyby-wire systems and active control technology.
Many of today’s high-speed military jet aircraft use control systems that incorporate “fly by wire with relaxed stability” and can give impressive displays of aggressive manoeuvring and aerobatics. These techniques, plus active control technology, will be incorporated in the next generation of fighter aircraft to make them smaller and more manoeuvrable and cost-effective than today’s aircraft such as the F-16, Mirage 2000 and Tornado air defence variant, which incorporate fly-by-wire control systems.
Fly-oy-wire techniques have been taken much further in the British Aerospace Jaguar demonstrator aircraft which has recently completed a very successful programme of test flying with an active control fly-by-wire system.
A fly-by-wire system, shown in simplified form in Figure 1, uses a computer to mix the pilot’s demands with inputs from an aircraft motion sensor to shape the pilot’s demand. It allows an ideal response at all flight conditions, irrespective of speed, altitude, configuration or loading. FBW aircraft therefore have the potential to give ideal handling over a wide range of conditions and provide much more freedom to manoeuvre since the system can compensate for any “rash” pilot demand.
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