CFIT - USAF med software

Air Force Keeps Pilots Alive with iPlane Upgrade


This graphic shows how the Air Force's new Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System is supposed to work.

New software roboflies F-16s out of trouble

The Air Force has long expressed concern over the fact that the leading cause of fighter-pilot deaths is when perfectly-operating aircraft simply fly into the ground because of poor weather, pilot distraction, or unconsciousness due to extreme maneuvers that can drain the blood from a pilot's brain. This tendency even has its own grim acronym: CFIT (pronounced see-fit), for "controlled flight into terrain."

Too often, Air Force accident-investigation boards have ended like this one last year in Afghanistan ("MP" refers to the "mishap pilot"):

Screen Shot 2014-09-30 at 2.10.22 PMThe Air Force estimates that CFIT has killed 75% of the 123 F-16s pilots-92-lost since the first fatal F-16 crash in 1981. But the software upgrade should sharply reduce such accidents. "This is a significant development and will save lives," says retired Air Force lieutenant general David Deptula, a fighter pilot with more than 3,000 flight hours, including 400 in combat. The system is likely to be added to the service's F-22 and F-35 warplanes.