Beating
Brownout
Army UH-60 Black Hawk lifts off
during dust landing qualifications
held at Camp Beurhing in Kuwait.
Radars, ladars and situational awareness displays are keys
to safe helicopter landings in Degraded Visual Environments
Photo courtesy U.S. Army
By Frank Colucci
Blinding sand and dust clouds churned up by helicopter otors still cost the U.S. armed services lives and aircraft in ongoing conflicts. Since 2002,
the Army alone has lost or damaged 27
helicopters in brownout mishaps, the
latest last October when a Special Operations Chinook hit a hidden obstacle on
takeoff and crashed with 10 fatalities.
The Air Force, Navy and Marine
Corps likewise have suffered losses oper-
ating at unprepared sites in dense, recir-
culating dust. One former Air Force Pave
Low pilot summarized, “I’m essentially
flying a controlled crash into the ground
with no outside reference.”
Better crew training and improved
cockpit symbology and flight controls
have provided some help in addressing
the common threat of brownout. Singly
and in partnership, the services and the
Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) meanwhile are pur-
suing advanced see-through, see-and-
remember and combination technologies
for safe landings in desert dust.
