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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Flight Mode Con
Figure 10. Flight Deck of Contemporary Aircraft. As one example, the Airbus A380 Flight deck contains
displays and controls that are ind icative of displays and controls that will be needed in breakthrough-era craft.
Image source : (September 2007)
Primary Flight Display
The primary flight display (PFD) provides information about the vehicle's orientation
(pitch, roll, and compass heading), motion (speed and rate of climb), and altitude. It is
centrally located in front of the co-pilot's seat, and a smaller version is available to the
right of the pilot's navigation display. Figure 11 shows a close-up of a PFD that also
shows its heritage from the mechanical instruments of older aircraft that have now
been merged into a single computer-controlled instrument.
This instrument is vital to the safe operation of an airplane. It displays orientation
(pitch, roll, compass heading), motion (forward airspeed, rate of climb), and position
relative to a critical axis (altitude). This particular graphic was selected because it also
shows the lineage to the individual mechanical displays of prior aircraft; artificial
horizon, airspeed, compass heading, altimeter, and rate of climb. Per many of the
recommendations from human factors research, a blend of graphical and alphanumeric
elements are now used, and t he central orientation graphic, t he "artificial horizon," is a
direct physical analogy to the physical world.
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