USAF Test Pilot School involves students in testing Auto ACAS collision avoidance system, providing benefits for all parties involved in the process.

Aviation Week Senior Editor Guy Norris takes us on a test flight of the automatic air collision avoidance system, auto ACAS, with the U.S. Air Force 416th Flight-Test Sqdn.

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Preparations for my Auto ACAS flight began the previous day with training and equipment fitting at Edwards AFB.

Simulation Key Enabler for Auto ACAS Flight Testing Designed to save aircraft from collision with just seconds to spare, Auto ACAS is meant to operate in a highly dynamic environment in which time and space become quickly compressed. Long before such a system could be flight tested with real aircraft, it had to be developed, evaluated and proved on the ground in some of the most sophisticated high fidelity flight simulators yet designed.

Unmanned aircraft are most often viewed as augmenting manned aircraft, perhaps eventually replacing some of them, but a more likely future lies in their becoming intimately essential to each other. Two new U.S. research notices give hints of such an outcome.

Real-time strain sensing allows small unmanned aircraft to redistribute lift in flight, paving the way for lighter, more flexible wings.