AAWSAP DIRD, Cockpits in the Era of Breakthrough Flight, November 2010

This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, dated 1 November 2010 and numbered DIA-08-1011-002, was prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office. It is one of a series of advanced technology reports produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications program. It draws mainly on the book Frontiers of Propulsion Science and speculates about breakthroughs such as control of gravity and inertia and faster-than-light travel. It then proposes a provisional cockpit design with six-degree-of-freedom controls, virtual displays and no windows.

From the source:Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 11/1/10, Las Vegas, Nevada. Released with redactions. This document is a Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), a technical reference format used by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to capture baseline knowledge on a specific topic for later analytic use. DIRDs are best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research. It is one of 38 DIRDs produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) between 2009 and 2011. Because AAWSAP’s scope permitted a broad range of supporting topics, not every DIRD in the series directly concerns aerospace systems or future threat assessment. The following summary reflects the DIRD’s scope and framing at the time of writing and should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed. This DIRD examines how cockpit design might change if future aerospace vehicles were ever to achieve major propulsion breakthroughs such as control over gravity and inertia, “propellantless” flight, or faster-than-light travel. The report does not describe an existing or emerging vehicle class. Instead, it asks what such hypothetical capabilities would mean for piloting, displays, controls, and human factors, and it argues that the biggest design challenges would come from full six-degree-of-freedom motion, operation across multiple flight regimes from near-surface flight to orbit and deep space, and the possible separation between the craft’s actual motion and the crew’s internal physical sensations. It combines those assumptions with established human-machine-interface principles and with maturing inputs such as gesture, voice, and brain-machine control to outline a provisional cockpit centered on intuitive displays, stress-tolerant physical controls, and a virtual surround display.

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• Navigational information sources:
- Position:
• Master reference taken relative to starting position (Sun-Earth system).
• Current location taken from the following:
o Star tracker:
• Modified to handle 3D database of star locations for deep-space
motion (yet less than 100-light-year radius around the Sun).
• Predictive trajectories (to extrapolate positions for FTL travel).
• Note: Can only take star tracker readings at sublight speed.
o First integration on measured velocity and relative to point of
departure.
o Second integration on measured accelerations since point of departure.
- Velocity:
• Directly measured from cosmic microwave background Doppler shifts,
where velocity is relative to the mean rest frame of the universe.
• First integration on measured accelerations since point of departure.
- Accelerations:
• Linear:
o Accelerometers with corrections calculated based on the influence of
the propulsion methods that affect gravitational and inertial forces.
o Differentiation of velocity changes as measured using the cosmic
microwave background.
• Rotational:
o Gyros (e.g., ring laser gyros) with correction inputs from the
propulsion methods that affect gravitational and inertial forces.
o Orientation as inferred from star tracker measurements.
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