For those of you who haven't seen it yet, there's an interesting project going on at NASA, called "Autonomous Formation Flight".

Phase 1 is under way, and there are some Quicktime movies of an F-18 intentionally flying with one wingtip directly in the vortice of the F-18 in front of him. According to the article, NASA is looking for ways to use the energy in the vortices for more efficient formation flight.

The page is at http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/mov...M-0048-01.html

Check out the aileron and ruder deflextions on the chase plane
some piloting skill shown there

That is really interesting. Thanks for pointing it out.

You could have tip sensors on the following airplane that could select the area of maximum good lift and feed it back to the autopilot for control. The flow in the tip vortex that is visible certanly looks really stable. It should be possible to pick within a few inches once you knew what to look for. Short of that a little work would determine the best point and use a laser or two to position each relative to the other. It would be fun working on that. Luckily I don't have to work any more, retirement has its benefits.

At least in those movies it looks like they would have a good deal of longitudinal separation. I don't think I would take my eyes off the other airplanes in the flight though.

Geese have been doing it for a long time but they have adaptive wing tips and all the other stuff. They also are one with the air, a zen thing.

Does this mean we will soon be seeing flocks of migrating F-18's going south like geese?

So THIS is what V formations of migrating birds have known all along. They use the vortices of the one in front to make their efforts easier. I always wondered about that and other than some lame explanation about following in the lead bird's "wake" for less "drag" there was never any explanation from normal sources. I admit that I never looked into it further than PBS though.

NASCAR's follow in "wakes" for less "drag".... not birds. This video shows me a much more plausible reason the birds use the V formations.

Since this project has been labeled an "Autonomous" system, I assume that it will lead to us seeing flocks of UCAVs going into combat in a few years.

Robots against robots...kind of like "Terminator".

Several aviation big wigs have publicly said that they expect the F-22 and F-35 ("Joint Strike Figher") to be the last manned fighter aircraft that they'll produce. (!) Things are changing.

If you poke around on the Dryden site there is a similar project going on about autonomous refueling for UCAV's using probe & drogue. They need to work out the logic for how the UCAV would chase down the basket flexing around at the end of the hose

Seems maybe a bit silly since the US has the ability to refuel via flying boom. In that case the UCAV would just park itself behind big momma and get plugged in.

Anyway, I believe the autonomous nature in the original case also refers to the fact that you can't expect a pilot to hold a precise formation needed for efficiency for multiple hours and not get worn out. This kind of thing would need to be done by the autopilot as well.

About 15 years ago I read a science fiction short story that was written around the use of remotely manned fighter aircraft. The pilots being in a 100% virtual surround environment. Seems it may not be so far fetched as long as they can maintain the links with assurance.