Autopilot for Jets

The pilot in the cockpit of a jet fighter on a combat mission is a busy man. Besides flying his skittish aircraft, he must navigate, search for ground targets, avoid enemy antiaircraft and watch out for enemy fighters. No pilot has enough hands, eyes and brains to do all these jobs perfectly. Last week the Air Force told how it had teamed up with William P. Lear, winner of the 1950 Collier Trophy for aviation, to take some of the job of flying and fighting the airplane off the jet pilot's neck.

Automatic pilots are in common use in such large, slow-reacting airplanes as airliners and bombers, but none of the conventional models was alert enough to fly a jet fighter. None was small enough either. A jet fighter is practically "solid"; it is hard to find a vacant cubic inch to stow additional equipment.

Lear Inc.'s F-5 autopilot is much lighter (weight, less than 55 lbs.) than its predecessors, and so small (volume, 1 cu. ft.) that its parts have to be assembled by watchmakers' methods. When the plane is once in the air, the pilot can point it on its compass heading, turn on the autopilot, and relax as far as flying is concerned.

If the pilot needs to maneuver violently, he merely "overrides" the autopilot. When the crisis is past, the autopilot takes charge again. It will also "couple" to radio signals and bring the jet down safely to a fog-covered field.

The Air Force does not maintain that the F-5 can fly a jet better than a human pilot can. Its purpose is "reduction of pilot fatigue," leaving the pilot fresh and alert for the climax of combat.

When the climax comes, another electronic assistant, the Sperry A1C radar gunsight, will help the pilot hit the enemy. Jet fighters move so fast that the pilot has only a few seconds for firing, and human eyes and brains cannot be depended upon to select those seconds unfailingly. The radar gunsight (still under thick wraps) makes all the calculations automatically. It tracks the target, measuring its distance, direction and relative speed. All the pilot has to do is keep the target inside a circle of light on his windshield. When the enemy plane is in a position where it will be hit, the gunsight knows it --and fires the guns.

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