Not long ago, I read a tragic story of an F-18 crash in Virginia
Beach. The instructor and the student Navy pilot of an F-18 fighter
plane had a catastrophic failure, were forced to dump all their fuel,
and eject. The plane crashed into an apartment building. There were
eight people injured on the ground, although not seriously, and no one
was killed thankfully. Of course, the taxpayers lost a very expensive
airplane, and the apartment complex went up in flames. Okay so, in
considering this event, I have some thoughts which came to my mind on
future technologies.
Perhaps you are aware of the common cockpit theory which states that all aircraft should be set up in a similar fashion, therefore a pilot can go from one aircraft to another and know where everything is without having to relearn the aircraft. It would be much the same as a laptop computer where all the specific keys on the keyboard were all the same. Or getting out of your car, and getting into a Rent-A-Car, and all the controls were the same, therefore you knew where the horn was, windshield wiper, parking brake, and you could reach for anything without looking. You can understand the safety factor involved here, and how this would increase safety in all regards.
Now then, consider if you will if that Navy training flight never occurred. Rather what if that student had been flying the simulator instead of the aircraft itself. Simulators are becoming more and more real these days, so it really wouldn't have mattered, they could've got most of their instruction while on the ground in a very real virtual reality environment, not to mention the fuel savings costs. That makes sense right? If the student pilot had flown Cessna's, Beechcraft's, or Piper's then all of those aircraft would have had similar cockpits with everything basically everything in the same place, or at least as close as possible if the common cockpit standardization ever comes to full fruition - that would be good right?
Still, it costs a lot of money to have common cockpits, and get every aircraft manufacturer to build everything exactly the same way. Not to mention that there will be aircraft built in China pretty soon and other nations as well. Getting everyone on the same page with that much standardization is a very difficult task. Nevertheless, it is a noble concept and a wise thing to do. Now then, in reasoning all this I wonder if it's even worth doing for military aircraft because in the future as an ever-increasing number of UAVs or unmanned aerial vehicles being built, humans may not be flying very many aircraft in the military in future anyway.
Indeed, perhaps we might consider the costs of up-grades, and standardization when everything is about to change anyway. Or we may realize that many of these UAV platforms might someday encompass a human pilot module, in which case the plug-in ports for that peripheral would in fact need complete standardization. Please consider all this and think on it.
Perhaps you are aware of the common cockpit theory which states that all aircraft should be set up in a similar fashion, therefore a pilot can go from one aircraft to another and know where everything is without having to relearn the aircraft. It would be much the same as a laptop computer where all the specific keys on the keyboard were all the same. Or getting out of your car, and getting into a Rent-A-Car, and all the controls were the same, therefore you knew where the horn was, windshield wiper, parking brake, and you could reach for anything without looking. You can understand the safety factor involved here, and how this would increase safety in all regards.
Now then, consider if you will if that Navy training flight never occurred. Rather what if that student had been flying the simulator instead of the aircraft itself. Simulators are becoming more and more real these days, so it really wouldn't have mattered, they could've got most of their instruction while on the ground in a very real virtual reality environment, not to mention the fuel savings costs. That makes sense right? If the student pilot had flown Cessna's, Beechcraft's, or Piper's then all of those aircraft would have had similar cockpits with everything basically everything in the same place, or at least as close as possible if the common cockpit standardization ever comes to full fruition - that would be good right?
Still, it costs a lot of money to have common cockpits, and get every aircraft manufacturer to build everything exactly the same way. Not to mention that there will be aircraft built in China pretty soon and other nations as well. Getting everyone on the same page with that much standardization is a very difficult task. Nevertheless, it is a noble concept and a wise thing to do. Now then, in reasoning all this I wonder if it's even worth doing for military aircraft because in the future as an ever-increasing number of UAVs or unmanned aerial vehicles being built, humans may not be flying very many aircraft in the military in future anyway.
Indeed, perhaps we might consider the costs of up-grades, and standardization when everything is about to change anyway. Or we may realize that many of these UAV platforms might someday encompass a human pilot module, in which case the plug-in ports for that peripheral would in fact need complete standardization. Please consider all this and think on it.
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