FEATURE ARTICLE

November 2006

Research aims for ‘game-changing’ technologies

By Grace Jean

Air Force research is focused on a multitude of high technology quests, including a drive to perfect a more economical alternative to fossil fuels.

Across the board, it is looking for ways to get more return for its investments in science and technology. The goal is to develop technologies that are more attuned to the service’s mission and to improve its next generation of weapon systems, officials say.

“I believe it’s in the interest of America to have the Air Force begin again to drive the technology of America,” says Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne.

The officer who oversees science and technology efforts, Maj. Gen. Ted Bowlds, says the Air Force will be seeking to strike a balance between near-term needs and long-term goals.

“With the budget we’ve got, we’ve got to go out and build partnerships. We work very hard to do that,” says Bowlds, who is the commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

“You don’t want to get your research too near-focused, because then, 10 years from now, when you’re looking for that next nanotechnology, it’s not going to be there,” he says.

Much of the near-term research is being driven by the war on terrorism. “The enemy tends to be very dynamic, very agile, and problems present themselves for which you need a quick solution,” says Bowlds.

The lab has an annual budget of $1.5 billion, which is supplemented by $1.8 billion through customer-funded research and development efforts. Funding generally is divided into three major areas: aviation, space and information technologies.

Aviation projects receive half the budget while the rest is spread between space and cyber-technologies, says Bowlds.

Among the current priorities are hypersonic systems. The lab recently brought back online an old wind tunnel that had been in storage for 10 years.

“We spent a fair amount of money refurbishing it and putting in a new data system so we could resume hypersonic testing into Mach 2, Mach 3 types of speed ranges,” says Bowlds.

The lab is investing in a number of hypersonic technologies, including airframes and engine components for high-speed turbines, ramjets, scramjets and rockets.

In the space domain, there has been a push to improve situational awareness, so that the commander on the field will understand how the space environment is behaving. The goal is to be able to detect new launches, to track systems and objects in space, and to understand the health of assets in space.

In the field of information technology, scientists are working on a “joint battle space information sphere,” to improve how raw data from the battlefield is controlled, moved around, merged and then delivered in a cognitive manner to troops on the ground, explains Bowlds.

The lab is pursuing several avenues of research to improve the capabilities of unmanned aircraft. “The thing that we’re doing in the UAV realm is trying to open up the thinking,” says Bowlds.

Currently, UAVs either can loiter in the sky for a long time or can fly out to a trouble spot quickly. The lab is moving ahead on a project that would allow a drone to do both.

“We’re working with Boeing on a ‘morphing wing’ concept, so that when it has to dash, it folds the wing up and makes the dash, and when it gets there, it folds the wing out and starts to look like a U-2 [spy aircraft],” explains Bowlds.

Autonomous aerial refueling — the concept of having a drone fly up behind a tanker, take an offload of gas and continue on its mission — is another technology that is progressing. Tests using global positioning satellite systems to guide Lear jets have been conducted, and the hope is that one day UAVs will have unlimited staying power in the skies, says Bowlds.

Scientists also are improving the man-machine interface for these technologies, striving to break boundaries in how humans interact with a drone. Efforts to downsize UAV sensor packages and increase data capacity are ongoing, he adds.

As the U.S. military’s greatest fuel consumer, the Air Force, which guzzled more than 3 billion gallons last year, has a vested interest in alternative fuels.

One project involves the use of a synthetic fuel that is produced from natural gas through a process that was developed by Germans and used during World War II. The so-called Fischer-Tropsch fuel is the subject of much bench-level chemistry work, says Bowlds. Scientists are busy blending the synthetic fuel with existing petroleum-based products, such as the current JP-8 jet fuel, to learn how the mixtures impact engines and components.

A 50-50 blend of traditional crude oil-based fuel and the Fischer-Tropsch fuel was tested in two B-52 bomber engines in flight at Edwards Air Force Base in September.

Once the bomber takes flight for cold-weather testing in January or February, the next step is to expand the pool of test aircraft, to include a squadron of KC-135 tankers, says Bowlds.

The wider use of alternative fuels in the Air Force, however, is years away.

“The thing that makes changing fuel hard is that you need time in the airplane. Sometimes, the seals deteriorate over several months, and you need to fly for a period of time to see that. Plus, there’s not a lot of synthetic fuel out there yet,” he says.

Wynne believes the research will have an even bigger impact — jump-starting a market for alternative fuels in the country.

“That’s one of the reasons I’m flying the B-52 with the Fischer-Tropsch fuel … to try to drive that technology, and get our airplanes certified so we can be a buyer, and stop the myth that wide-bodied airplanes can’t use this alternative fuel,” he says.

“I think the American people deserve to know if we, for whatever reason, get faced with a shrinkage in our oil supply, we have an alternative,” says Wynne.

Looking down the road, Bowlds sees several innovations coming to fruition within the next two decades.

One is the ability to find and track objects. Current battle information systems give troops video in the visible and infrared spectrums, while other systems provide information on electronic assets, such as unmanned aerial vehicles. But in the future, “you’re going to have a picture that has no gaps in it, with all the information that you need to make decisions,” says Bowlds.

The ability to deploy assets responsively also is a priority for the lab, he says. “You won’t find yourself waiting for a C-17 to take what you’ve got — your ground forces, your support package — somewhere.” With such improvements, the service could “deliver a communications satellite in a matter of days, not months, to a hotspot somewhere in the globe and be operational very quickly.”

Given the Air Force’s aging fleets, technologies that improve the maintenance of weapons systems increasingly are receiving more attention. “We’ll be able to track the way a plane ages. We’ll be able to have a sustainment system that’s much more responsive and allows us to lengthen the time that that weapons system is out there.”

Bowlds believes that in the future, such technologies will catch problems before they occur so crews will “know, from a predictive standpoint, when an airplane needs to be brought in, because it’s got a structural problem that’s starting to develop, as opposed to the fade inspection that we do now,” he says.

The lab’s scientists strive for breakthroughs in order to produce what Bowlds calls “game-changing” technologies.

“We’re not trying to do evolutionary or revolutionary science — we’re trying to change the game,” he says. “Think about when stealth was introduced in the F-117. It fundamentally changed the game, and everybody had to react to that. We’re trying to find that cutting-edge science that changes the game down the road.”

An example is the laser countermeasure system developed for cargo aircraft to thwart heat-seeking missiles.

“It’s changing the nature of how people on the ground with man-portable surface-to-air missiles can engage a large aircraft. That, I believe, is game-changing,” he says. “We’re working on the science for the next generation.”

Military research facilities have been criticized in the past for making important discoveries that then languish in the laboratories, he says. The Air Force lab has worked to change that perception by being more proactive, sending researchers out to combat zones and asking troops what problems they have, or bringing them to the lab as systems are designed.

Such outreach and open lab policy have appeared to improve relations between scientists and combat units, Bowlds says. “They have come to us with their ‘911’ kinds of things.”

For example, when a C-17 landing gear broke, the lab helped the operators understand the reason for the malfunction.

To better respond to the technology demands coming from the front lines, the lab has stood up an “innovation shop,” supervised by flag officers, to address the immediate needs of troops, says Bowlds.

“Core Process 3” is the admittedly obscure name for the undertaking, says Bowlds, but it has allowed the lab to resolve some pressing issues.

For example, last winter, the Air Force Special Operations Command sought the lab’s help to fix a problem with their helicopters in Afghanistan. The country’s sandy terrain caused pilots to lose sight of the ground whenever they attempted to land. The “brown-outs” were so severe that some landings resulted in crashes and, in a few cases, fatalities.

“We’re working on a very rapid solution to give the pilots situational awareness during the transition to landing,” says Bowlds. It has taken the lab only a few months to come up with an answer, and tests of the technology were scheduled for the fall.

AFRL also is involved in projects across the services, notably one supporting the Marines, called “Project Angel Fire” — an airborne platform equipped with six high-definition cameras designed to locate improvised explosive devices and insurgents in Iraq.

“Think of it as a real-time Google map. And you can zoom in and move around the map in real time,” says Bowlds.

While most of the technology is commercial off-the-shelf, the lab, in collaboration with the Air Force Institute of Technology, developed customized imaging software that combines data from multiple sources.

“They can see what’s going on, see what the enemy is doing and get it down to the guys on the ground,” says Bowlds.

The lab’s scientists conducted a test at the Marine training facility in Twentynine Palms, Calif. “It was so successful out there that they want us to deploy at the end of this year,” says Bowlds.

Every May, the Air Force laboratory receives wish lists from the major commands, such as Strategic Command, Air Force Special Operations Command, Air Combat Command and Air Mobility Command.

Under an effort called “focused long-term challenges,” the lab studies the requests from the commands, and determines whether it can pursue the work in house or should seek partnerships with other organizations.

“It’s worked to date, but it doesn’t have the rigor that I would like it to have, and that’s what we’re trying to grow,” Bowlds says.

At the Office of Naval Research and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, for example, the AFRL has assigned a half dozen of its scientists to observe the work being done in those organizations and build on that collaboration.

“We’re always looking for those teamwork opportunities … to make sure that the research we spend our precious few dollars on is research that is very much needed,” he says.

Please email your comments to GJean@ndia.org

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