Documents / Official release
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.
UNCLASSIFIED/ ,'FOR OFFI@IAL WSE QptLY Chapter 3: Provisional Cockpit for Breakthrough Flight Applying the strategy of using the most demanding situations to guide designs, the provisional cockpit presented here assumes a single pilot. Without any crew amongst whom to disburse the workload, such a cockpit must be more efficient and effective. The "design for stress" approach is also applied, which drives the design to have actual physical displays and controls that are concentrated in a "tunnel vision" zone. The elements on these physical panels are predictably fixed, owing to lessons of human factors. Newer technology such as virtual reality displays with augmented reality and gesture based inputs are also included, along with voice and thought commands. Based on lessons from adaptive display errors, and considering the limits of human concentration, limits are imposed on the use of voice and thought commands . The overall configuration is shown in Figure 13 and consists of a modest set of physical panels surrounding a seated pilot, along with a large virtual display surrounding the entire area. The most critical displays and controls are condensed into the forwardmost panels. FLIGHT MODES The most fundamental flight mode is the full manual mode. Each subsequent flight mode offers increasing levels of automated assistance, up to and including a fully autonomous control mode that can operate even when the pilot is incapacitated. A provisional set of flight modes (whose buttons and indicators are presented across the central flight mode panel from left to right) include the following: • Full manual. • Manual w/safe assist. • Interactive assist. • Fully autonomous (keyed to emergency responses). Full Manual As the name suggests, this is where the pilot has full control over the motion of the vehicle through joysticks, switches, gestures, voice, and thought. This is the most difficult flight mode for the pilot, and accordingly provides the best situation from which to design the guidance displays and to set the requirements for the various control inputs. In subsequent studies, 48 this would be the flight mode to specify when addressing the challenges of guiding the pilot for entry into orbits and navigating in difficult situations. UNCLASSIFIED/fFOA: OFFICIO la Plili Oralla¥ 32
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 57 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.