Navy fighters are one upgrade away from changing carrier aviation forever
An F/A-18F Super Hornet from Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 23 makes the final landing for carrier testing of the MAGIC CARPET flight control software aboard the aircraft carrier George Washington off the coast of Virginia on June 27. Meghann Myers/Navy Times Staff
Meghann Myers, Navy Times 11:31 a.m. EDT July 3, 2016
ABOARD CARRIER GEORGE WASHINGTON OFF NORFOLK, Va. – In a typical aircraft carrier landing, a fighter pilot may make up to 300 adjustments with the stick and throttle over 18 seconds before hitting the deck and snagging the jet's tail hook just-so across one of four arresting wires.
It's one of the most dangerous and stressful jobs in the world because of that landing, but a revolutionary program that's as simple as a software upgrade will take a lot of the scrambling out of the final seconds of a combat mission.
It's called MAGIC CARPET, and — don't laugh — it stands for Maritime Augmented Guidance with Integrated Controls for Carrier Approach and Recovery Precision Enabling Technologies. What it does is put jets into a sort of automatic landing mode that guides the plane's trajectory to the deck and reduces the frantic adjustments out of the process.
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