Putting The Fight In Flight

Military aircraft and their bizjet counterparts share more than meets the eye-to the benefit of both.

- Basem Wasef

AT FIRST GLANCE, private jets and military aircraft couldn’t seem further apart. But in the grey area between coddling luxury and missionbased efficiency, there’s a rich history of innovation exchange that has helped both categories stay on the bleeding edge of aviation.

The trend started in 1909, when the US Army Signal Corps bought a Wright Military Flyer from the Wright brothers for US$30,000, and has kept apace for more than a century as dozens of aircraft types were converted for the armed forces. Military-technology transfer is now advancing even more rapidly into the civilian market, with the latest generation of electric aircraft currently undergoing flight testing in preparation for certification in the next few years.

The white space tackled by electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft has brought with it the opportunity to invent new flightcontrol systems for easier, safer operation. “We’d been researching the best way to control a vehicle of this class,” explains Peter Wilson, who is leading the creation of the training programme for Joby Aviation’s pilots. “We decided that unified controls is a proven direction to go,” he says, referring to systems that allow vertical takeoffs and landings to be executed with one hand. Military programmes, including that for the Lockheed-Martin F-35B, had already contributed significant funds to developing the technology, which has since been modified by Joby and rival Archer for eVTOL implementation, with controls that are far smaller for the compact airframes. The advanced systems relay commands every few milliseconds via pilot input to help automate flight, the endgame being a much safer, more intuitive generation of aircraft.