Completion of OpFoKus at the Air Force

24 February 2020

Under the chairmanship of Brigadier General Christian Leitges (Head of Department I, Further Development and Planning), the final presentation of our OpFoKus project took place today at the Luftwaffe Command in Berlin-Gatow. The project acronym OpFoKus stands for "Operational requirements for the conception of a manned / unmanned flying weapon system". Since the end of 2016, the scientists of the Chair of Aircraft Dynamics and Flight Guidance have been investigating future military air operations, scenarios and operational solutions under the assumption of technologies for Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T). In contrast to classical OR (Operations Research) studies, concepts of cockpit, UCAV and swarm automation were implemented as executable laboratory prototypes in our fighter simulator, integrated into complex, dynamic scenarios (permissive to contested) and tested in different configurations for the deployment of forces with air force pilots in real-time experiments (we reported).

Today's report summarizes our experiences from the experiments as well as recommendations for the specification and deployment of the FCAS/NGF (Future Combat Air System - Next Generation Fighter). Of course, an outlook on the work already started at the institute to investigate future cockpit configurations for a NGF flexibly deployable in MUM-T missions was also given.

The photo shows (from left to right) Prof. Axel Schulte, the enthusiastic staff members Juliane Müller, Felix Heilemann, Dr. Diana Donath and Sebastian Lindner, as well as the extremely committed and competent project manager on the part of KdoLw, Maj (i.G.) René Birkholz. We would like to thank him especially for his great support and the high level of trust and concern he has shown.