Naval push button landings on the Carrier

[727Sky]

We had an auto landing ability with most of our aircraft which was/could be used during CAT 3 landings. When you can not see due to low visibility due to fog  (or whatever) a CAT 2 or 3 ILS landing is made. Now it looks like the Navy guys and girls are getting an auto landing system for their fly by wire aircraft. I am not surprised as the Navy is landing drones on their carriers already. You gotta wonder after 100s of push button landings if the crew will still be able to actually hand fly an aircraft back onboard the carrier ? I was seeing great push button pilots who were terrible when they actually had to hand fly the aircraft. 

These are categories of Instrument Landing System (ILS) approaches based on the minimum visibility and decision height requirements for an approach to land.

• CAT I: The basic form of ILS, requiring a decision height of at least 200 feet and a runway visual range of 550 meters or more.
  
• CAT II and CAT III: These offer lower minimums for visibility and decision height, with CAT III allowing for almost zero visibility landings in some cases.
  
• Technological and Training Requirements: Advanced equipment and pilot training are required for CAT II/III approaches.
  

Category I/II/III approaches are critical in ensuring safe landings in varying visibility conditions, enhancing the capability of aircraft to land safely in adverse weather.

[EndtheMadnessNow]

According to some at the Pentagon, there will one day be no more human fighter pilots.
Lockheed has been testing a modified F-35 with an AI pilot.

My late uncle was Naval fighter pilot in WWII. When I was a kid I once asked him to describe what it was like to land on a carrier at night. He gave a slight grin and said place a postage stamp face down on the floor. Turn off the lights. Now, take 10 steps back, then run as fast as you can toward the stamp and jump like you are going to do a dive bomb and lick the stamp with your tongue while landing smoothly on your belly. Can I pad the floor with pillows first. No!

[FCD]

I used to know a guy who flew carrier based aircraft for the Navy in the Pacific.  Talked to him many times about those operations.  He was an F-14 pilot.  Really cool guy; nerves of steel.  You could not rattle this guy.  He had all kinds of sayings for what carrier flight was like.  Landing, of any kind, was clearly the most challenging by far.  As a pilot myself at the time, I was fortunate to be able to talk down and dirty with him about technical stuff and operations.  Plus, I got to ask just about any question I could dream of.

When discussing landings, he had one story he always liked to come back to as an example.  Landings (as noted) were the most challenging, but night landings, or "night traps" as he called them, were especially dangerous and challenging.  He would say on a scale of 1 to 10 where a normal landing at an airport with no wind on a sunny, clear, day was equal to a "1", a similar daytime landing on a carrier rated an 8 or a 9.  An instrument approach and landing in medium traffic at the same airport would rate a 4.  He would then go on to say if you then slid the scale and rated an easy carrier landing as a "1", then a night landing (trap) rated about a 7.  Quite a jump.  But then he'd go on to say night landings were hard, but they were nothing compared to night landings in poor visibility onto a pitching deck, and those rated about an "11" on a 1-10 scale (just to put things into perspective).  That would probably rate about a score of roughly "30" at our easy airport example.

The way he put it, landing on a carrier wasn't really a "landing", but more of a "controlled crash".  You didn't fly down and gently land on the deck, you flew the airplane down "into" the deck.  Every pilot had their own way of visualizing the process, but the way he said he visualized it was he wasn't landing 'on' the deck, but landing on an imaginary surface about 20 feet 'below' the deck.  You just slammed the airplane down into the deck, and this is one of the reasons that carrier aircraft have to have such heavy landing gear, just to deal with the punishment of landing. 

In the process of designing a carrier aircraft one of the big design considerations is the weight of the landing gear.  Weight is always a big consideration in any aircraft, but for a carrier aircraft the weight of the landing gear is a huge consideration, much more so than usual.  I didn't realize this, but most multi-purpose planes (i.e. land and sea based) fail in their dual purpose role simply because the tradeoffs in order to get heavy duty enough landing gear under the airplane result in so many (other) sacrifices that the plane wound up failing to be approved as a viable candidate for the Navy.  It's that big of a deal.

When I watch the video and read about this new "push button" landing system, which are largely HUD controlled systems, I'm left to wonder how they would ever be able to deal with low visibility, at night...onto a pitching deck (?). 

The one story this friend of mine told about one such night made the hair on the back of even MY neck stand up, and I wasn't there.  He said on this one particular night the landing success rate was about 1 in 5, meaning they had 4 "bolters" (i.e. missed attempts) for every successful 'trap'.  On this one night the wing commander had apparently decided this was going to be good training, but after they got up the weather and sea state deteriorated rapidly to where they were way outside minimums.  They already had a pitching deck condition when they launched, but now they were low on fuel, it was raining and it was dark.  There was apparently one guy, a seasoned pilot, who lost his nerve and they were really worried about if he was actually going to be able to get the airplane onto the deck.  He wound up "trick or treating" (having to aerial refuel from a circling tanker).  The tanker was also running low on fuel, and the conditions were such that they couldn't launch another tanker.  This only added to the stress.  The guy did wind up making it, but it was like his next to last attempt, else he was going to have to ditch the aircraft.

I think he said the flight was like close to one of the last flights this particular pilot had before he was getting out.  Pretty sad way to go out after a career of that kind of bravery and madness.  I don't recall if he said whether they guy flew again after that.  I would think they would have at least let him ferry an aircraft to land, but the Navy is funny that way sometimes, so maybe not.

Anyway, I have my doubts about these "push button" systems, especially when even a seasoned veteran can get in trouble, and those guys are hands-on landing every day.  Have someone get rusty or out of practice for that level of intensity and I think we'll be seeing a lot more aircraft getting ditched into the sea.