ADD Systems’ Post

Act as if. Great advice for life if you want to be better…

Low-level flying is a unique aspect of military training. Pilots aim to fly as low and fast as safety allows, simulating tactical ingress and egress while avoiding detection. This results in a heart-pounding display of skill as jets streak mere hundreds of feet above treetops. In practice, planning low-level training consists of resolving overlapping concepts of safe altitude clearance driven by the height of man-made obstacles or terrain. This is complicated and labor-intensive, requiring legacy mission planning systems that are difficult to use and to keep updated. As a result, the best case for our customers is often to plan a single batch per aeronautical data cycle and export them as raster charts, which they then import into ForeFlight MFB as custom static map layers. But for the real world, where connectivity and access to the mission planning system aren’t guaranteed, I challenged my team to do better: pull the low-level world away from static charts and into a dynamic, data-driven concept using our terrain and obstacles to calculate safe clearances instantly, through any series of points on Earth, on the ground or in the air. Following our first step in delivering the award-winning Hazard Advisor suite, we now present Low Level Corridor: Emergency Route Abort Altitude (ERAA) as the next evolution. As the widest and most restrictive of a multi-tiered trench of corridors, this considers the highest point within 22NM of a planned low-level route and calculates and displays an altitude safely above this point to be used in the event of an in-flight emergency, or for any other reason a pilot might abort. My favorite capability of the feature is a built-in understanding of “mountainous” terrain. Referenced by the FARs and DoD regs alike, “mountainous” terrain is defined as a rise-over-run elevation change per nautical mile, and a higher safe clearance altitude is required for these regions. The FAA publishes a coarse graphic defining “mountainous” regions for the US, but overseas, DoD pilots often plan mountainous clearances where they don’t strictly need to because they lack a well-defined reference. No longer is this the case, as ERAA in MFB One has an embedded boundary of mountainous regions and will automatically apply extra clearance if the route crosses this boundary. Once again I’m blown away by the talents of Atlas Wegman who engineered this magnificent feature (before accepting a promotion to lead our AI efforts) implementing the beautiful designs of Chris St. Amant. And special thanks to Brian Farm, who cracked the obscenely difficult worldwide terrain processing. There is much more to come to deliver a truly complete low-level solution: tactical corridors for different flight rules (e.g. VFR, night, NVG) and incredible per-leg briefing and SA tools… but until then, blue skies!

Explore the latest issue of Ocean News & Technology, featuring Michael King, the Head of Sales at Sulmara, and their dedicated efforts to #decarbonize the #offshoreenergy sector by replacing conventional operational support with OPT's innovative WAM-Vs, designed for #unmanned and remote survey solutions. Click the link below to delve deeper into their groundbreaking work. #maritimeindustry #usv #hydrography #hydrographicsurvey

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Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death at work in the U.S. Many disparities in motor vehicle crash risk have been attributed to social determinants of health, including differences in access to and quality of healthcare and education, economic stability, the social and community environment, and the neighborhood and built environment. Learn more during National Safety Month: https://bit.ly/3K4dZl2

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Explore the latest issue of Ocean News & Technology, featuring Michael King, the Head of Sales at Sulmara, and their dedicated efforts to #decarbonize the #offshoreenergy sector by replacing conventional operational support with OPT's innovative WAM-Vs, designed for #unmanned and remote survey solutions. Click the link below to delve deeper into their groundbreaking work. #maritimeindustry #usv #hydrography #hydrographicsurvey

on air from 5-10 am