Netherlands' national capability to design its own fighter?

NLR, a Dutch aerospace research lab, said in its paper “50 YEARS OF RESEARCH FLIGHT SIMULATION IN THE NETHERLANDS – VIRTUAL FLIGHT INTO THE FUTURE” that it helped IAI prove the Lavi’s fly-by-wire system from 1982 to 1986 and later helped Saab fix the Gripen’s fly-by-wire system that caused two crashes.

From this limited information could we presume the Netherlands’ aerospace industry has enough expertise to design a fly-by-wire system for an ‘indigenous’ fighter given time and money?

I am trying to identify countries that have a national capability to design its own fighter but chose not to do so due to economic and political considerations.

The Netherlands’ aerospace industry has certain expertise in flight control and it was only about 10 years ago when Fokker went out of business in commercial airliner manufacturing.

Could the Netherlands be one of those ‘have the capability but elected not to do’ countries?

Below is the link where you can download the paper.

http://www.nlr.nl/documents/Books/nlr50yofs.pdf

When Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) began developing the Lavi multi-role fighter aircraft in 1982, they soon realised that they were going to need the use of an extremely advanced research simulator to help them prove its highly advanced Digital Flight Control System (DFCS).

IAI looked for a facility that could match the sort of leading-edge technology they were developing for the aircraft. Having assessed what was available in the US, Europe and Australia, they decided that the most appropriate facility was NLR in Amsterdam. NLR could offer them the right level of expertise together with a high fidelity moving-based simulator platform.

In order to ensure that the simulator cockpit truly resembled the Lavi’s, NLR designed a control stick to IAI’s specifications and the simulator was fitted out with the same flying characteristics as the prototypes. So much so, that IAI’s chief test pilot remarked with amazement: “The simulator flew in exactly the same way as the actual aircraft!”

One of Lavi’s key features was the sophistication of the cockpit, which was designed according to the requirements laid down by Israel’s combat pilots. It was essential that the pilot should be able to engage the enemy, in the air or on the ground, without being distracted by having to monitor the aircraf t’s subsystems.

During the time the two companies collaborated on the project (1982 – 1986) a number of design changes were implemented as a direct result of the feedback obtained from the simulator research. Structural changes were also made to the aircraft including an extended under- fuselage fin and alterations to the landing gear damping system. Although the Lavi project was

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In the mid 1990s, GFORCE was able to assist Saab Aerospace of Sweden with their investigations into the handling qualities of the JAS 39 Gripen fourth-generation fighter following two separate prototype crashes. NLR helped to fix the flight control system (see box story on next page).

The knowledge gained on Digital Flight Computer Systems by NLR technicians during the Lavi project was to prove extremely valuable for the development of another multi-role fighter, the Saab JAS 39 Gripen.

Following the crash of the prototype Gripen in 1989, Saab was faced with a difficult question. Why was their fixed-base simulator not able to reproduce the flying characteristics which led to the loss of the aircraft? The answer to this question was supplied by NLR’s GFORCE simulator. It was because the test pilot was not flying the prototype aircraft in the same way as he was flying Saab’s simulator.

GFORCE, with its moving-platform, capable of combining six different movement types (six degrees of freedom) was reconfigured to replicate the Gripen to create the level of realism required for this type of investigation. Saab even supplied their mini side-stick for added authenticity.

Following exhaustive research flights the NLR experts were able to confirm to Saab that when the aircraft experienced sudden movements due to wind turbulence, the pilot’s corrective steering was too quick for the aircraft Flight Control System. The Gripen was experiencing Pilot Induced Oscillation (PIO). In the same way as a car loses control when the driver overcompensates whilst steering violently out of a turn, the pilot’s rapid steering from side to side was misinterpreted by the flight control system, resulting in loss of control. With the help of NLR, Saab was able to successfully reprogramme the flight control system to compensate.

Cheers,
Sunho