Aircraft Formation Flight Control Technology for Heterogeneous Formation Flight

The DON26BZ01-NV004 project seeks to develop advanced flight control technology for heterogeneous aircraft formation flight, specifically to exploit wake surfing for increased range and endurance. The objective is to create an autopilot system that can precisely maintain a trailing aircraft's position within the optimal upwash vortex of lead aircraft, minimizing pilot workload. Current challenges include maintaining precise relative position, which existing studies and flight demonstrations have shown to be effective for fuel savings (10-20%) but is workload-intensive for pilots. The proposed solution involves robust flight control laws for both coarse acquisition and precision tracking, ideally without additional hardware or datalink demands. Phase I focuses on defining and planning the control law approach, while Phase II involves prototyping and simulating the solution in a six-degree-of-freedom environment with dissimilar aircraft. Phase III aims to integrate these algorithms into future manned and unmanned platforms, including Collaborative Combat Aircraft Programs, with dual-use applications in relative navigation, UAS swarming, and robust flight control systems. The technology is restricted under ITAR and EAR regulations.