CHAPTER FOUR: COLD WAR TO THE PRESENT
placement. With the jet engines mounted in the wings, the cockpit was
positioned in the nose, giving the pilot a virtually unobstructed view. Engine noise was greatly reduced and the low-frequency vibrations pilots had to endure when flying the Spitfire or P-47 were gone. It was a totally improved and more comfortable cockpit environment. Nevertheless, focus on building a practical jet engine and airframe left little time or resources for cockpit design. Instrument and controls were provided from what was available, continuing a practice established in the 1930s.
Postwar, just as RAF Fighter Command equipped its frontline squadrons with the latest unswept version of the Meteor, the US Air Force (USAF) introduced the world’s first Cold War game changer. The North American F-86 was a swept-wing beauty. Fast, nimble, and well armed, it was, for a short time, the world’s best fighter interceptor. Designed for combat above 30,000 feet (9,144 meters), the F-86 cockpit was fully pressurized with a bubble canopy for
excellent all-round vision.
“The F-86 had a very comfortable cockpit because you could turn the temperature down and get snow coming out of the air conditioning! You could also get heat that was comfortable.”
—Colonel Walker M. Mahurin, USAF (Ret.)
Well equipped with an armored-glass windscreen, armor plate behind and in front of the pilot, and an ejection seat, the F-86 also had the A-1CM/APG-30 radar gunsight. During the Korean War this gunsight provided F-86 pilots with automatic ranging and proved decisive over the Soviet MiG-15’s primitive ASP sight, which often failed during high-G maneuvers and was not linked to any automatic ranging device.
In terms of performance the swept-wing Soviet MiG-15 was in many ways superior to the F-86. Equal in speed, it had a higher ceiling, was more
maneuverable above 30,000 feet (9,144 meters), and offered a superior rate of climb. In terms of cockpit comfort, however, the MiG-15 was severely lacking.
“The environmental controls for maintaining standard atmospheric pressure did not function well,” recalled Kenneth Rowe, formerly North Korean pilot Lt. No Kum-Sok who famously defected to South Korea in his MiG-15 on September 21, 1953. “The cockpit pressure at 50,000 feet [15,240 meters] was about half of the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level. The cockpit temperature was nearly freezing above 36,000 feet [10,973 meters] and about 100 degrees Fahrenheit [38 degrees Celsius] at low altitude on hot summer days.”
As the Korean War came to an end in 1953, the perception of Soviet aviation
As the Korean War came to an end in 1953, the perception of Soviet aviation and its growing capabilities worried Western leaders. As Cold War tensions grew, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) equipped its allies with hundreds of swept-wing fighters and light bombers. The expansion of Soviet military aviation proved a catalyst—the influence was indirect, but the evolution of Western air power was now firmly set.
The 1950s was another golden age for aviation. Spurred by Cold War fears and “mutually assured destruction,” military procurement budgets expanded rapidly. Aerodynamics and engine technology were pushed to the limits,
sometimes with disastrous results. As aircraft technology progressed the fighting cockpit was still playing catch-up.
The introduction of the Century Series fighters—the North American F-100, McDonnell Douglas F-101 Voodoo, Convair F-102 Dagger, Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, Republic F-105 Thunderchief, and Convair F-106 Delta—along with navy fighters (like the Douglas F4 Skyray, Grumman F11 Tigershark, and
Vought F8 Crusader), ushered in the age of the supersonic fighter. The Soviets responded with the MiG-19, MiG-21, and Sukhoi Su-7. Britain contributed with the Hawker Hunter, Gloster Javelin, and English Electric Lightning. France introduced the Dassault Mystère and Mirage III.
All these fighters were capable of speeds in excess of 600 miles (966 kilometers) per hour, and many could in fact achieve Mach 1.5. These high speeds introduced a new and vital piece of equipment into the cockpit: the ejection seat. These seats were large, heavy, and commanded a great deal of space. The first successful use of an ejection seat occurred earlier on August 13, 1942, when the test pilot in a Heinkel He 280V1 prototype lost control and ejected. That seat used compressed air to eject the pilot. It was a crude
beginning. Today’s ejection seats are listed as “zero-zero seats,” meaning they can fire upward from a stationary aircraft or low-altitude flight (zero speed, zero altitude). Previously, ejection required minimum air speeds and altitude. Before this capability ejections were restricted to minimum altitudes and speeds.
Not all Cold War aircraft, however, were fully equipped with ejection seats.
To save weight and space, they were only available to the pilot and copilot of the Avro Vulcan; the navigator and electronics and radar operators had to bail out the old-fashioned way. Compared to the Vulcan the Convair B-58 Mach 2 Hustler had one of the most advanced escape systems ever devised. Each of the three crewmembers was equipped with a self-contained escape capsule. Ejecting at Mach 2 and 40,000 feet (12,192 meters) was now survivable.
The HUD revolutionized cockpit efficiency. Pilots could now view vital flight and systems information
projected directly in front of them. This KC-130 Hercules is seen through the HUD of an AV-8A during air-to-air refueling. National Naval Aviation Museum
By the late 1950s avionics slowly revolutionized the aircraft cockpit. Pilots, however, were reluctant to accept the way in which cockpit information was now being presented. Avionic displays, especially attack radarscopes, were often shoehorned into the cockpit at the expense of ergonomics. Instruments were pushed to the sides, adding to overall cockpit clutter.
In the F-106 cockpit two items now dominated: the large radarscope and the tactical situation display. There was also the highly advanced Hughes MA-1 navigation fire-control system. “The thing that was really impressive, initially, was the tactical situation display that sat between your legs,” said Col. Don Stevlingson, USAF. “When it worked, it would show you your position on a moving map as well as your target’s position. In the end it got so damn complex to maintain they started cutting those features out and the tactical situation
display became a great cockpit light.”
All these new navigation/radar avionics created the need for more cockpit space, especially when it came to all-weather interceptors. Designers were forced to stretch the fuselage and add a second cockpit for a weapon systems officer (WSO, pronounced “wizzo”). These longer cockpits often had a second set of flight controls, but the primary job of the WSO was to detect and target air-to-air threats. Fighters, like the all-weather F-101 Voodoo, F-4 Phantom, CF-100 Canuck, Gloster Javelin, de Havilland Sea Vixen, F-94 Starfire, F-89
100 Canuck, Gloster Javelin, de Havilland Sea Vixen, F-94 Starfire, F-89 Scorpion, and F-14 Tomcat, all had a backseater.
By the 1960s the cockpit arrangements of most fighters and bombers continued in a random fashion. Like their World War II brethren, designers continued to place controls and switches wherever they could. The conventional pointer-on-dial instruments were now lagging behind in terms of information efficiency. The revolutionary heads-up display (HUD), a direct descendent of the World War II gyro gunsight, would prove the game changer designers were looking for.
During World War II engineers experimented with the gyrosight in an attempt to project aiming information directly onto the windscreen surface. The results were promising but it wasn’t until the advent of the airborne electronic analog computer that HUD became practicable. In 1955 the US Navy studied the use of HUDs and side-stick controllers in place of the regular control column.
Unfortunately the research was never incorporated into aircraft at the time, but the rudimentary HUD mockup had all the features found in today’s HUDs.
The first combat aircraft to use the HUD was the Blackburn Buccaneer,
which flew for the first time in April 1958. As a fast low-level strike aircraft, the Buccaneer needed precise navigation and weapon-release information that could be easily and quickly processed by the pilot looking out of, and not into, the cockpit. Initially called “strike sights,” the first HUDs were set in the pilot’s forward line of sight. The HUD was a large piece of equipment. The
distinguishing feature was a sizeable sloping combining glass. Vital symbols and alphanumeric numbers were projected from a cathode-ray tube (CRT) through a system of lenses and superimposed on the pilot’s view ahead. Early HUDs were powered by analog computers, but within a few short years the digital computer took over, giving the HUD greater versatility, reliability, and performance. Vital flight information such as altitude, speed, heading, angle of attack, vertical speed, aiming, and weapons status were accessed by simply looking straight ahead. Looking down into the cockpit was now a thing of the past.
Described as an “ergonomic slum,” the Blackburn Buccaneer introduced the first HUD. Originally called the
“strike sight,” the new HUD was rather simple compared to today’s devices. The sight glass could be folded down to improve forward visibility.
Unfortunately for pilots of the USAF, USN, and North Vietnamese Air Force (NVAF), who flew during the Vietnam War, their fighters were not equipped with HUDs. The two principal fighters in that conflict—the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom and Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21—both suffered from poorly
designed cockpits. Phantom pilots found the “switchology” required to fire their missiles easy to mishandle, leading to missed chances. (By 1972 Field
Modification 556 transferred all missile switches to the throttle lever for ease of operation.) For NVAF pilots in the MiG-21, their forward view was severely restricted by the large RP-21M radarscope and ASP-PF-21 optical gunsight.
restricted by the large RP-21M radarscope and ASP-PF-21 optical gunsight.
“If I could have changed anything in the MiG-21 cockpit, it would have been the weapons controls. There were too many buttons and they were scattered around the cockpit. You had to actually switch hands while flying to activate some of the
controls.”
—Squadron Leader Lieutenant Commander Slawek Olczyk, Polish Navy (Ret.)
Recalling his experiences as a combat pilot in Vietnam for Air and Space magazine in 2010, retired Col. Donn Byrnes commented, “We had our tail feathers burned off in Vietnam by the MiG-19, and if we went to war with Russia, we would be in deep trouble.”The lessons learned from Vietnam led directly to two new fighters that transformed air-to-air fighting and the design of the fighting cockpit.
The McDonnell Douglas F-15 and General Dynamics F-16 were the answers to a Vietnam fighter pilot’s prayers. Both featured large bubble canopies for an excellent all-round view. In terms of cockpit ergonomics, the F-16 led the way.
Unlike the F-15’s canopy, the F-16’s was a single-piece bird-proof
polycarbonate that gave the pilot 360-degree visibility. The F-16 canopy also lacked the forward bow frame found in the F-15, which obscured the forward view. For the first time the pilot sat at a tilted back angle of 30 degrees (most fighter seats were tilted at 13 or 15 degrees), allowing for taller pilots and increased G-force tolerance.
Cockpit systems were simplified and improved in both fighters, letting pilots concentrate on the business of flying and fighting. HUDs gave pilots a new range of information parameters for takeoff, cruise, target search, attack, and landing. The “hands-on throttle and stick” (HOTAS) control column was also introduced with the F-16. This moved a number of critical buttons and switches onto the control stick, allowing the pilot to avoid looking or groping for critical switches during combat. In the F-16 the HOTAS philosophy was distributed between the throttle and side-mounted control stick, which together had as many as eleven separate controls and selectors.
As computing power progressed, HUD versatility increased and they were soon capable of generating a wide range of information matched to the type of aircraft and mission parameters. At the touch of a button, the pilot could select a display to match the appropriate phase of the flight—route navigation, target selection, or attack—and also provide vital flight information, such as speed and
selection, or attack—and also provide vital flight information, such as speed and altitude.
By the early 1980s color CRT multifunction displays (MFDs) once again altered the cockpit landscape. MFDs are capable of displaying a number of data sets. Using “soft keys” mounted along the sides of the display, the pilot can access inflight maps and check the status of the entire fuel system. The days of monitoring a sea of “clock-type” electromechanical instruments was coming to an end. Programmable HUD and MFD units were now standard and would dominate cockpit architecture into the 1990s.
Today the “glass cockpit” reigns supreme. Advanced multirole fighters like the Lockheed F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Eurofighter Typhoon, Dassault Rafale, and Sukhoi Su-30, have replaced the old clock-type instruments with all-digital flight instruments. Each has the most advanced technology
available: highly advanced, full-color, multifunction head-down displays
(MHDD), wide-angle heads-up displays (HUDs) with forward-looking infrared (FLIR), direct voice input hands-on throttle and stick (DVI+HOTAS), and multifunctional information distribution system (MIDS).
In addition to these innovations, the “point-and-shoot” helmet has added a level of pilot effectiveness never thought possible. One drawback of the HUD was that it was always limited by its placement. The pilot has to look straight through it in order to see the information projected. Now the HUD information appears inside the pilot’s visor. During air-to-air combat or ground-attack missions, pilots simply turn their head, aim, and shoot. Officially called the helmet-mounted display system (HMDS) for the Typhoon, and the joint helmet-mounted cueing system for the F-15C/D, F-16 Block 40 and 50, F-18C/D/E/F, and F-35, the new helmets provide essential flight and weapon-aiming
information through line-of-sight imagery. The F-35 has done away with the forward-mounted HUD completely and taken the point-and-shoot helmet a step further. Video images, taken from cameras mounted on the aircraft, are
displayed on the helmet visor, giving the pilot the ability to “see through” the fuselage with a Terminator’s-eye view of the battle space. Indeed, the F-35 helmet has become the most expensive and technically complex pilot helmet ever produced, starting at around $770,000. The downside to this helmet is if the headgear malfunctions, the jet becomes inoperable. For a pilot’s situational awareness (SA), however, the helmet is a quantum leap from the development of the HUD.
The future of air combat lies with the pilot’s helmet. Today’s versions like those for the F-35 and Eurofighter Typhoon, pictured here, represent a quantum leap in pilot control. Information is now projected directly onto the pilot’s visor. The bumps on the back of the helmet are infra-LEDS and are used to calculate the pilot’s head position and angle, linking his eyes to the aircraft’s electronic brain. The pilot can now look in any direction, lock onto multiple targets, and, using voice command, prioritize them. Author collection
Modern-day advances in aerodynamics, computer automation, and cockpit design have turned the pilot into more of a battle-space manager than a combat aviator. As early as 1988 Air Vice-Marshal Ron Dick experienced the beginning of that transition first hand. He recalled:
I took my last flight in a frontline military aircraft. It was an F-16. Any resemblance between the cockpit of the F-16 and that of the Meteor I had flown thirty-six years before seemed coincidental. If I were honest I was more at home in less sophisticated surroundings. The young squadron pilots who flew the F-16 operationally had been brought up with computers and took to them naturally. I admired their remarkable professionalism and proficiency, but for my part I rather resented needing artificial intelligence to fly the aircraft and felt that, instead of being master of the machine, I appeared to have become merely an element in an integrated weapons system. The F-16 deflated my ego and made me realize just how much military cockpits (and pilots) had changed since World War II.
Today’s fighting cockpit is a wonder of sensors, displays, and computer power. The Typhoon and F-35 offer the best clues as to what cockpits of the future will look like, but a series of proven aircraft have moved the evolution of the fighting cockpit to a new and safer place. Unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAV) may eventually ground the fighting cockpit. The “cockpit” of a UCAV