UPDATE
FalconView Soars
The laptop mapping system, now used by a variety of aircraft, offers enhanced, award-winning features.
By Lea McLees
A laptop mapping system for flight planning originally developed for fighter planes is now useful with different types of aircraft, offers enhanced features previously available only on non-portable computers, and was a finalist in a recent prestigious international competition.
photo by Stanley Leary
Users test FalconView
on a U.S. Air Force C-130.
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FalconView, developed by the U.S. Air Force Reserve, the Air National Guard and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) for the U.S. Air Force, allows pilots to do their flight planning anywhere. Thanks to leaps in computer technology and recently declassified imagery, FalconView now includes overlay tools that mark no-fly zones and other areas, receives updates about hazardous obstructions (buildings, power lines, radio towers) via modem, and displays detailed threat information — all on compressed charts and with higher resolution imagery, says project director John Pyles.
"We've also added customized views to FalconView that vary based on the type of aircraft," says Pyles, a research scientist in GTRI's Information Technology and Telecommunications Laboratory.
FalconView was one of five finalists in the Sixth Annual Windows World Open Competition. The international contest recognizes developers and their organizations for creating breakthrough Microsoft Windows applications that solve business problems. The Air Force entered FalconView in the June 3 competition at Comdex/ Windows World '97.
The PC notebook computer-based FalconView is part of an overall flight planning system called PFPS — Portable Flight-Planning Software — which the Air Force recently adopted as one of its mission planning systems. FalconView provides pilots a Windows 95/NT base for mission planning digital maps and imagery. The 89th Airlift Wing at Andrews Air Force Base adopted FalconView for its moving map capability, using it on executive support missions. The 89th provides safe and reliable worldwide airlift and logistical support for the U.S. president, vice president, cabinet members and other government officials.
An estimated 13,000 aircrew members worldwide use FalconView.
Its new features include:
A new five-meter controlled image base (CIB)
offers twice the resolution of the previous imagery. The laptop monitor
now details five meters of land and sea per pixel instead of 10 meters.
Five-meter CIB was declassified recently, making it available to wider
audiences, Pyles says.
Tailoring to the specifications of a variety
of planes.
"Previously, we were mostly fighter-aircraft specific," Pyles says. "We've added support for the airlift community. Now FalconView includes multiple views, depending on the type of aircraft for which the route is planned."
An overlay kit allows pilots to mark no fly
zones, weather or troop movements and other important features on a map.
"In the past, a pilot had to sit down with a chart and draw these features out — and if a new chart came along, he had to transfer all these features by hand," Pyles explains. "Now, pilots can set up maps and give different features different symbols. Each symbol can be clicked on for more information, all related and geo-referenced to sites on the map."
FalconView users can connect to a chart
update system via modem, downloading the latest worldwide information on
obstructions.
"To date, there hasn't been a way to do this, except to draw in new features on a paper chart. Now you enter the information in the computer once, and the data stays on top of the chart or imagery," Pyles says.
The ability to download the latest locations of different types of towers — such as rapidly multiplying cell phone stations — is especially important now that FalconView is used by low-flying aircraft such as helicopters.
"When we moved from the fighter world to tactical airlift and helicopters, suddenly people cared a lot more about the objects near the ground," Pyles says.
Detailed information about threats is
available via FalconView. The system takes into account topography,
flight elevation and the range of a threat's radar system to let pilots
know if their plane is detectable.
"This is important for the F-16, but probably even more so for tactical airlift craft such as the C-130," Pyles says. "It's a big plane, it doesn't have any guns, and it's dropping food or medicine — it's easy for them to be seen on radar."
Older flight planning systems offer the same type of display. However, those systems are slower, big and bulky.
"It's a lot easier to revise your plans if you can carry the planner with you," Pyles notes.
FalconView offers yet another advantage over conventional systems: it retains the probability of a threat being at a certain location. In the past, such details could be lost as the information was handed off from system to system, and pilots had to assume that each threat was in the middle of the detection area.
"Due to the nature of threat detection systems, we are able to pinpoint different threat locations to different accuracies," Pyles says. "It is important that we pass this information visually to the pilot so he can gauge the risk of maneuvering past threats. A simple location display could be misleading to the user."
FalconView notes and marks with various symbols
objects that produce electronic emissions within certain bands,
including friendly aircraft and ships.
Map data is stored on compressed format CD-ROMS. One CD holds
the amount of data stored on 55 of the older disks. This and larger
laptop hard drives have made possible the mapping of large portions of
the earth on small, inexpensive computers.
Work remains to be done, Pyles notes. Customizing software for a variety of larger aircraft offers new challenges.
"The crew member of a KC-135 Stratotanker [an aircraft usually used for refueling], recently called because he wanted to make the map display show up on multiple computers," Pyles says. "At first I thought he was talking about the office, but it turned out that he had a local area network on the plane. Before, we were worried about squeezing a laptop in the cockpit. These types of aircraft open up new opportunities to meet the needs of aircrew in ways not possible on smaller aircraft."
And right now, users still need a pizza-box-size antenna to pick up the classified military feed necessary to acquire some of the information FalconView displays. But new hardware will allow this system to become airborne.
"We've fielded a few copies with radio sets that accept an intelligence feed signal and can provide real-time updates in the air," Pyles says. "We'll get feedback from tests in the fall."
Among additional directions Pyles and colleagues are considering for FalconView is installing it in planes, so pilots could load map and flight plan data from cartridges onto the aircraft's computer system. They also are interested in applying FalconView to search and rescue missions and international flights.
Further information is available from Terry N. Hilderbrand, Information
Technology and Telecommunications Laboratory, Georgia Tech Research Institute,
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0832.
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Last updated: Dec. 3, 1997