REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala -- The Rules of Engagement for Army Aviators may drastically change in the future if two West Point cadets have anything to say about it.
United States Military Academy Cadets Matthew Vane and Casey Tuggle participated in an Advanced Individual Academic Development program for three weeks this summer to learn about aviation to assist them with research in their "2010-2011 Service Academy Senior Capstone Project 'Rules of Engagement' Crew System of the Future 2035."
Bill Crawford, and Marty Eaton, engineers with the Advanced Science and Technology Directorate, Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center, sponsored Vane and Tuggle on their visit to the Aviation Engineering Directorate and the Software Engineering Directorate at Redstone Arsenal and the Aeroflightdynamics Directorate at Moffett Field, Calif.
While at Redstone Arsenal, Vane and Tuggle got the full tour of SED's Aviation Labs: Unmanned Systems (Robotics) lab, America's Army, Unmanned Aerial Systems lab, Rotary Wing Aircraft (Apache/Chinook/Black Hawk) lab, Kiowa lab, SED Aviation Interoperability Laboratory, and Aviation Systems Integration Facility.
"It was an interesting experience, to knowing very little about aviation cockpit design, to mastering the basics in three weeks and AMRDEC was an amazing experience," said Tuggle.
Vane felt the West Point AIAD Program helped him to open his eyes to the whole aviation and big Army picture. The program offered him the possibility of coming to Redstone Arsenal to attain a much better understanding of how things operate and the thought process behind Army aviation.
"I feel all the facilities gave us a very broad overview of the different technologies and configurations of ways to design a cockpit. We learned the core philosophies to go into how things are placed and designed in the cockpit as well as useful processes to construct our own mock-up," said Vane.
Scott Dennis, ASIF Director, gave the cadets a briefing and a tour of the ASIF showing them how they could simulate cockpit functions.
After their whirlwind tour across the United States and being exposed to current and future aviation programs, the cadets had a good foundation to complete their project.
"We have a complete understanding of the cockpit system as it sits in the present day and what types of resources we can think to use in the future," Vane said.
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