Suggestions for flying qualities requirements of autonomous control unmanned combat aerial vehicles

There is a lack of quantitative flying qualities assessment requirements for unmanned combat aerial vehicles. The mission-oriented flying qualities evaluation approach can make up for the deficiencies of existing flying qualities specifications. Considering the control characteristics and mission requirements of autonomous control unmanned combat aerial vehicles, flying qualities assessment tasks are designed and performance standards are developed on the basis of manned aircraft flying qualities assessment tasks. Multiple sets of mathematical simulations are performed by varying the control law parameters to investigate the relationship between the control law parameter values, closed-loop aircraft system characteristics and flying qualities levels. The simulation results and closed-loop frequency domain analysis show that the existing flying qualities guidelines for manned aircraft are not fully applicable to the flying qualities assessment of autonomous control unmanned combat aerial vehicles. It is found that the combination of the bandwidth and the phase at the bandwidth frequency can define the flying qualities requirements of autonomous control unmanned aerial vehicles. The criterion boundaries of different levels are given, and the physical reasons for the formation of boundary are analysed. Our results can be applied to flying qualities assessment and design of flight control laws for autonomous control unmanned combat aerial vehicles. (c) 2023 Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).