Bringing Aerial Mapping Down to Earth

New computer techniques may help fighter pilots take a tiresome task and fold it away for good. . .

Paperwork is a pox on just about everybody’s house – but especially so when it’s crammed in the cockpit of a jet fighter. In these cramped quarters, most pilots are forced to correlate what they are able to see on the ground with the symbols and squiggles they see on flight maps strapped to their thighs. Not a safe nor simple task in low-level flight in hostile airspace, over a broken country, in bad weather or darkness.

Before this decade runs out, tactical aircraft pilots should be able to permanently stow the paperwork because the U. S. Air Force is sponsoring experiments that could make such unwieldy charts obsolete.

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