Symbology Collaboration Helps Pilots “See” During Brownouts Published Sept. 8, 2011 By Beverly Thompson Sensors -PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio -- Degraded visual environments, including brownout in the desert environments of Afghanistan and Iraq, account for one third of non-hostile combat and non-combat helicopter mishaps. AFRL has been conducting a collaborative in-house effort with the US Army Aeroflightdynamics Directorate (AFDD) to develop flight symbology to safely land helicopters in zero visibility. AFDD is developing the BrownOut Symbology System (BOSS); AFRL is developing the guidance and manual control laws/algorithms, known as BOSS-LG, to provide landing guidance. The guidance provides ground track, ground speed, and sink rate commands to the pilot. The goal of the design is to achieve "visual quality" landings in zero visibility. AFRL has reached a major milestone with completion of the preliminary development of the landing guidance in a rapid prototyping simulator environment. Simulator evaluations were conducted with US Army test pilots, with encouraging results. The next step is flight verification on the AFDD EH-60L flight test helicopter. The completed design will be demonstrated in a US Army flight test program later this year. Deployment of this capability to joint-service helicopters is projected to substantially reduce mishap rates, with improved performance and mission capability.