Air Force Research Provides Seed to High-Tech Cargo Delivery System

  • Published
  • By Erin Crawley
  • AFOSR Public Affairs
ARLINGTON, Va. --  Years of basic research investments by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research here have paid off in a technology transition that supports a high-tech cargo delivery system. The Joint Precision Airdrop System or JPADS was deployed in a combat zone for the first time in August in Afghanistan in support of the warfighter.

JPADS is used to drop cargo bundles from cargo planes with precision accuracy - from high altitudes of 24,000 thousand feet at Mean Sea Level (MSL) and higher. This cutting edge technology will introduce a new era of reliable and safe means for supplying troops on the ground and conducting humanitarian relief missions more efficiently.

The system uses the same global positioning technology that fighter pilots use to identify targets for smart bombs with amazing accuracy.

In August 2006 the 774th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron employed JPADS to drop supplies to a U.S. Army unit serving in Afghanistan, marking the first time the system was used in a combat zone by the U.S. Air Force and Army.

Managed by the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Center, the Air Mobility Command, and many other services and organizations, JPADS is the result of a successful integration of Air Force and Army technology, conceived and supported by basic research funding from AFOSR and the Army.

Steve Walker was the program manager at AFOSR from 1997 to 2001 and oversaw the JPADS basic research investment.

"JPADS was part of a series of special projects that came out of the New World Vista study initiated by Sheila Widnall in 1995 when she was secretary of the Air Force," Walker said. "Her concept evolved from an Air Force Scientific Advisory Board recommendation to pump up several areas of research and development investment - one of them was precision air delivery."

"During the time I was involved with the precision drop investment, we [AFOSR] invested in three key areas - winds prediction, guided and controllable air shoot drops, and the computational algorithms and planning software required to tie it all together," Walker said.

In 1998, during U.S. humanitarian missions in Bosnia, Air Force pilots faced a significant challenge of dropping cargo loads within 150 meters of the intended target while flying 130+ knots indicated air speed (KIAS) at 15,000 to 25,000 feet MSL. As a result, AFOSR decided to fund the U.S. Army Research Development and Engineering Command at the Natick Soldier Center, Natick, Mass., to examine revolutionary ways to improve high altitude air drops with great accuracy.

"This was an unusual program for AFOSR, since it was really between basic research and development work with universities, companies and government lab working together to make it happen. It was referred to as 6.1.5 research, so it was somewhere between basic research and development," Walker said.

By 2001 the JPADS project was ready for a live rollout at the 2001 Precision Airdrop Technology Conference and Demonstration (PATCAD-2001) in Yuma, Ariz., where the research and development team successfully demonstrated the global positioning system (GPS) guided parachute (known as the Affordable Guided Airdrop System (AGAS)), improved winds prediction technology, and the laptop based planner.

In 2002 AFOSR's investment of approximately $1.5 million started to pay off. At this stage of development, the research team successfully demonstrated the system as an affordable and reliable means to increase accuracy of high altitude airdrops. The development and testing phase improved the system's design by further enhancing guidance, navigation, and control algorithms. At that time the system was known as one decelerator candidate within the Joint Precision Aerial Delivery System (JPADS) program.

In the following years, the Army focused on developing the physical hardware and mechanisms that steer the parachute to a pre-programmed GPS location after the cargo is released from the plane. Meanwhile the Air Force and the Army developed and fine tuned JPADS-Mission Planner (JPADS-MP), which is a laptop that allows aircrews to release their payload at a precise location accounting for aircraft's position, course, and airspeed, as well as a whole host of other environmental variables that influence the airdrop's accuracy.

JPADS-MP allows aircrews to perform airdrops out of harm's way at higher altitudes with greater accuracy.

The JPADS-Mission Planner (JPADS-MP) component has also been used by the Special Operations Command for military freefall (MFF) operations, according to Richard Benney, technical manager of the JPADS project at the US Army Natick Soldier Center.

"The laptop dramatically increases the stand off capability for Special Operation Forces MFF warfighters," Benney said.

Standoff is the horizontal distance that the system can travel from where the aircraft released the payload to the planned ground impact point.

While many services and organizations lead the JPADs efforts across the Department of Defense, the majority of testing has taken place at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground.

To date, the total research development testing and evaluation (RDT&E) investment in the JPADS-MP project is approximately $35 million.

"This includes investments from AFOSR and many other organizations, primarily the Air Force and Army," said Benney.

Benney shared how delighted he was to see JPADS working in the field.

"We are excited to see these systems being used. JPADS truly demonstrates how effective an airdrop will become as an incredibly reliable and effective means for transporting supplies and personnel in the future for all DoD services," said Benney.

Benney continued, "It's all about providing the warfighter with a cost effective, just-in-time, re-supply capability. JPADS will protect the aircrews and aircraft by flying high above the threat while providing an opportunity for convoys to redirect their route to avoid the ever increasing threat of improvised explosive devices."

By funding research programs such as JPADS and JPADS-MP, AFOSR continues to expand the horizon of scientific knowledge through its leadership and management of the Air Force's basic research program. As a vital component of the Air Force Research Laboratory, AFOSR supports the Air Force's mission of control and maximum utilization of air, space, and cyberspace. Many of the technological breakthroughs enjoyed by millions today, such as lasers, GPS, and the computer mouse trace their scientific roots to research first funded by AFOSR.