Suggestion for aircraft flying qualities requirements of a short-range air combat mission

Owing to the lack of a direct link with the operations in short-range air combat, conventional aircraft flying qualities criteria are inappropriate to guide the design of a task-tailored flight control law. By applying the mission-oriented flying qualities evaluation approach, various aircraft with different control law parameters are evaluated on a ground-based simulator. This paper compares the evaluation results with several conventional flying qualities criteria, and discusses the appropriate parameter combination to reflect the flying qualities requirements of short-range air combat. The comparison and analysis show that a short-range air combat mission requires a higher minimum short period mode natural frequency and a smaller maximum roll mode time constant, and allows a lower minimum pitch attitude bandwidth and a higher maximum short period mode damp ratio than those of conventional flying qualities criteria. Furthermore, a combination of the pitch attitude bandwidth, the pitch attitude magnitude at the bandwidth frequency, and the pitch attitude transfer function gain can define the flying qualities requirements of short-range air combat. The new metric can successfully predict the flying quality levels of aircraft in a short-range air combat mission.