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Neuro-Avionics: Firefox Still Decades Away?

Scott Wolff No Comments Technology
I remember sitting in my living room with my dad when I was a kid, watching Clint Eastwood in “Firefox.” The jet was just…cool: twin vertical stabs, two big motors, a ton of wing, canards, and more. It was just a big, menacing beast of an airplane. Arguably the most “futuristic” quality of the fictional MiG-31 in those days was the ability for Eastwood’s character to manipulate certain aircraft systems using neuro-driven technology. “Think in Russian…-“

Fighter aircraft avionics have come so far, so fast that it’s hard to realize that only a century ago, the first U.S. Army Air Corps was doing battle over northern France in open cockpits equipped with shockingly rudimentary controls. Today, fighters like Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor are so fully-equipped with advanced head-up display technologies that one wonders whether neuro-activated flight controls are just around the next cloud.

For now, however, such neuro-tech remains the realm of the 1982 Clint Eastwood film “Firefox,” which features a fictional Soviet MiG-31 stealth aircraft that fires its weapons merely upon the pilot “thinking” such a command.

It’s pretty likely that someone is working on something very similar, aviation historian Donald Nijboer, author of “Fighting Cockpits: In the Pilot’s Seat of Great Military Aircraft from World War I to Today,” tells me. But he says such advanced neuro-avionics are likely still decades away, even if it’s debatable whether such tech would actually save time in the cockpit.

Neuro-Avionics: Firefox Still Decades Away?

A pair of Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptors conducting training off of the Virginia Coast. (Photo by Scott Wolff)

Nijboer says neuro-technology research is already underway on hands-free tech to control fighter aircraft. I guess a neurological cockpit would be the ultimate, he says, but as an F-22 pilot told me, “The Raptor can outsmart you; it’s that good.”

The original article is pretty interesting, and we encourage you to read it in its entirety at Forbes right here.
(Featured Graphic by surclaro.com)

About the Author

Scott Wolff is an accomplished writer and renowned aviation photojournalist. He has held the position of Managing Editor for a print flying lifestyle magazine, and is the Host and Editor for FighterSweep. Scott's area of expertise is military flight operations, drawing on ten years of experience working extensively with all branches of the armed forces. He holds an FAA pilot certificate, the culmination of a life-long passion for flying airplanes. Scott has received military altitude chamber training, emergency egress training, and has logged time in a variety of civilian and military aircraft. He is also a member of the International Society of Aviation Photographers and Nikon Professional Services.

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