Technology makes fighter aircraft deadlier than ever

Any number of movies have made fighter aircraft objects of glamour. But, in truth, billions of dollars are being spent calculatedly to make them leaner and meaner agents of destruction.

Improvements in technology has made fighter aircraft lighter, faster, more "aware" and therefore deadlier than ever.

A combination of better aircraft design, precision weapons technologies and the ability to de-couple more decisions from the pilot, who can then concentrate on flying the plane, is changing fighter aircraft to a sophisticated multi-role aircraft, a senior adviser to BAe Systems, a UK defence firm said here on Monday.

BAe Systems is supplying its Hawk jet trainer to the Indian Air Force, and is a "level one partner in the Joint Strike Fighter project", a joint European effort to build a fifth generation fighter aircraft, he said.

The next generation of fighter aircraft will be designed and built with that multi-tasking ability in mind. Such aircraft will take their place at the heart of "network enabled warfare", said John Day, a retired British air chief marshal. Britain, and the United States, which called it "network centric warfare" already have such technologies, he said.

The networks send fighter aircraft pilots vital updates on fluid battlefield situations in real time, while culling out unnecessary data that might prove as distractions.

Cockpits, such as those in the Eurofighter Typhoon, are being improved to present pilots with information rather than data that the pilot must spend time interpreting.

A great amount of software had gone into automating many functions within the aircraft, thus making the man-machine interface simpler.

Wherever possible, information is relayed as voice, and voice activated functions too were incorporated, he said.Increasingly, secure datalinks and wireless communications technologies allow "instructions" to be sent directly to the weapon itself, onboard an aircraft.

The weapons themselves have evolved: better guidance systems mean a missile will hit a spot within a few feet of its target, even when the targets are mobile.

Such rockets need less explosives packed into them, making them smaller and lighter, allowing more of them to be put on an aircraft. So the aircraft becomes capable of attacking more targets.

Typically, aircraft platforms stay the same for some 30 years, with one or two major upgrades of avionics, the software and hardware combination that controls and runs the aircraft.

In the future, aircraft will be upgraded faster, in a process called spiral development, aided by computer-aided rapid prototyping.

Better aerodynamics, better weight to thrust ratios and more sophisticated radars will be at the heart of any basic design improvements made in the aircraft.

Finally, support from the network, including airborne early warning systems and satellites, has made modern reconnaissance so good that the pilot's work on that front has been "reduced to a small percentage of what it was five years ago", Day said.

Automatic cameras that change their apertures and angles in real time based on an aircraft's position, and geographic positioning systems sensors ensure that aircraft find their targets "first time every time", he said.