Pilot-in-the-loop testing of a constructive suppressor scenario in the avionics wind tunnel

This paper describes a test involving a single simulated aircraft in a simulated threat engagement environment executed in a standalone configuration (constructive mode) and with hardware-in-the-loop and pilot-in-the-loop (virtual mode). The test was run using the same threat engagement scenario generator for constructive, autopilot, and live pilot runs. Data was taken and analyzed to show the effectiveness of going from constructive to virtual testing. Data was also taken to show the possible benefits of allowing pilots to modify a path selected for the constructive analysis, and then giving the results of those runs to the constructive analysts for route refinement. The results show that it was possible to go from constructive to virtual, but that complete correlation is difficult. The results also show that pilots were able to perform better than the constructive simulation given the freedom to deviate from the programmed route.