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 ONLY CONTROLS Similar to the blend of physical and virtual displays, the control methods will also be primarily physical controls (joystick), with augmentations possible through gesture, voice, and thought commands. Vector Motion: Six-Degree Joysticks Adapting to human norms of physical analogies and taking advantage of force-feedback features, the primary control for the vehicle's motion will be a pair of six-degree-of freedom joysticks, one for both the left and right hands, located at the edge of the arm rests. By moving either hand to mimic the orientation or direction of the desired motion, the craft will respond accordingly. Studies suggest that force-proportional, instead of displacement- proportional, operation of joysticks is optimum. Accordingly, the joystick does not require much space to encompass its motions. The intensity of the force input corresponds with the intensity of the resulting motion of the craft. There is, however, a limit to the span of forces that can be input from the hand compared to the span of intensity of the vehicle's propulsion. For example, consider that the hand can resolve speed settings of ±2 mph, but only over a span of zero to 45 mph, while the vehicle is capable of speeds from zero to relativistic. Obviously, some additional input, analogous to a throttle, is necessary. The challenge for the breakthrough craft is that such a throttle is an option for all three linear axes, not just the primary axis of motion. With such uncertainty, and not having any simulations run on test subjects, it is uncertain how best to provide the directional intensity control. Provisionally, it is recommended to have a trigger and/or a combination of buttons that the user selects to convey the maximum intensity of the propulsion system that corresponds to the maximum force input to the joystick. For example, with a light trigger input, the full joystick force might only correspond to a speed comparable to driving a car. With a heaver trigger input or buttons selected to provide deep-space flight speeds, the maximum force on the joystick might correspond to 0. 9 c. Accommodating such uncertainties would be a subject of future study. Owing to lessons of natural relaxed positions of wrist rotation, 52 the neutral palm (with the thumb-side facing inward and forward) is at 35° upward relative to the horizontal and 25° forward. This deviates from the normally upward-pointed joystick, but recall that contemporary flight joysticks are just for rotational axes' command inputs. Gesture Commands Gesture-augmented commands are used in conjunction with the virtual surround display to identify and act on objects in that display. For example, the pilot can point to an object of interest, which is then highlighted, and issue the voice command, "go there." This would be an option in the interactive assist flight mode. Other options for the gesture-based commands are difficult to define at this time, due to the uncertainty of actually operating such a vehicle. Regardless, however, provisions to account for buffeting and other possible input errors would need to be included in future plans. UNCLASSIFIED/ fFOA. OFFICIO Is. flili Ol'lls.¥ 41
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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.