While airlines grapple with the issue of cabin surveillance, NASA plans to tackle the long-term challenge of improving aircraft safety and security. The US agency's just-released "aeronautics blueprint" outlines a research agenda which ranges from aircraft hardening to threat prevention.
The blueprint identifies a number of potential technology solutions, but notes the most challenging aspects of security are often not technical, but to do with policy, acceptance, safety and implementation issues.
Aircraft hardening research is intended to produce designs that are more resilient, and that can tolerate unforeseen failures and damage. One challenge identified by the blueprint is the move from analogue to broadband digital communications, and the resulting need to protect onboard networks from electronic intruders.
Technology solutions range from blast-resistant structures and self-extinguishing fuel to self-healing systems that can detect and rectify failures. Flight controls could reconfigure in flight to avoid stressing the system and delay the failure, or could compensate for failed components and land the aircraft safety. Secure communications, network intrusion prevention and software-virus protection are other areas of research.
The blueprint highlights the increased complexity of airspace management that results from heightened security, adding protected areas to existing constraints on air traffic imposed by terrain, noise and weather, and making it more difficult to detect when an aircraft is deviating from its intended flight path.
The resulting airspace complexity will need a combination of precise positioning and computer modelling to generate curved, four-dimensional approaches that optimise traffic flow and avoid congestion, NASA says. Its research is intended to provide precise flight-path management and real-time air-traffic monitoring to assure that an aircraft deviating from the predicted approach is easily identified.
Preventing intentional and unintentional intrusion into protected airspace is also in NASA's research agenda. While synthetic vision will fuse the display of navigation, terrain, traffic and weather information to increase crew awareness of the aircraft's situation, the same information could be used by onboard computers to protect the aircraft's trajectory, and plan manoeuvres that avoid protected areas.
NASA foresees this technology becoming the "conscience" of the aircraft, refusing to allow it to perform unauthorised airspace intrusions or to a controllable aircraft to crash. Features include automatic avoidance manoeuvres, autonomous navigation and landing and ground control override. "Combined with a secure command link and proper flight controls, this technology will give controllers on the ground the ability to direct an errant aircraft to a safe and secure landing site," NASA says.
The research agency also plans to develop technology enabling the rapid detection of dangerous situations onboard aircraft in flight, be it a terrorist, a fire or some other threat. Solutions include wideband datalinks that allow real-time transmission of cockpit information, cabin video and flight data to a remote monitoring centre. The intention is to resolve emerging issues before they become catastrophic, the blueprint says.
The final element of NASA's research plan for improving aviation safety and security tackles the first line of defence - identifying threats early on. The agency plans to develop technology to provide real-time threat assessment, from seat reservation to passenger boarding. The system would use biometric devices to identify passengers and intelligent search engines to check them against databases maintained by a variety of security agencies.
NASA also proposes extending its successful, confidential Aviation Safety Reporting System to allow anonymous submission of security incidents. This would create an early- warning system that could identify and correct deficiencies in the aviation security system before a vulnerability is exploited.
Source: Flight International
