State of the Market for HUDs

The state of the market for head-up displays (HUDs) in corporate aircraft is pretty well summed up in one sentence. Every Boeing Business Jet has a HUD and almost 90 percent of Gulfstream Vs are delivered with HUDs.

But that may change, as NBAA 2000 sees some announcements that could herald the wider use of HUDs on commercial aircraft. One of the world's new aerospace giants, BAE Systems, is preparing an attack on the HUD market, and two smaller avionics companies, Universal Avionics and Flight Visions, are here to announce an alliance on a new class of low-cost HUD.

Operationally, HUDs are a near-perfect match for corporate aircraft. The ability to fly into smaller, austere airfields that may be unfamiliar to the pilot is basic to the business jet's job description, and underpins the flexibility for which the customer pays. Corporate aircraft also lack the redundant automatic flight control systems that larger aircraft use to land in poor visibility.

Unfortunately, HUDs are expensive, with lots of high-precision, custom-built optical and electronic components. They are subject to the laws of physical optics. The part of a HUD which the pilot sees is the screen, but the HUD's base unit contains a complex optical chain which projects an image on the display. Performance requirements are strict: there are not many easy ways to generate an image that is bright enough to be legible against an intensely lit sky. It is hard to design an efficient HUD, with a wide field of view, without a fairly substantial box located directly above or below it.

Consequently, HUDs at present do not fit very well, economically or physically, into most business aircraft. In-service, roof-mounted HUDs are too large for aircraft smaller than a Gulfstream or Falcon. At $450,000-$500,000 installed, they represent too large a slice of the aircraft price unless the airplane is in the $20 million zone or above. That is why-as a percentage of production-more Gulfstream Vs have HUDs than any other commercial airplane, but not one business jet smaller than a Challenger or Falcon 2000 is even available with a HUD.

The fleet of large HUD-equipped corporate aircraft is growing quite rapidly. Gulfstream is leading the way. The factory-standard unit is integrated into the aircraft by Honeywell, but is actually produced in the UK by BAE Systems, formerly Marconi Avionics.

The unquestioned world leader in commercial HUDs, however, is Rockwell Collins subsidiary Flight Dynamics. (Founded as an independent company, Flight Dynamics was taken over by Collins and Kaiser in the mid-1990s, and Collins bought out Kaiser's share in 1999.) Fleet-wide orders from major Boeing 737 operators, including Southwest, put Flight Dynamics on top of the business. The Boeing Business Jet has a Flight Dynamics head-up guidance system (HGS, the company's trademark name) as standard equipment. Flight Dynamics systems have accumulated more than five million flight hours.

Flight Dynamics' HGS-2850 is a factory option on the Dassault Falcon 900EX and Falcon 2000. According to Larry Brandt, senior manager for corporate aviation at Flight Dynamics, around 85% of Falcon 900EXs are being delivered with HGS, and 40% of Falcon 2000s are equipped. However, he notes, the latter figure is depressed by the fact that a single customer -Executive Jet-buys a large number of Falcon 2000s without the HGS.

Both the Falcon variants have now been certificated for Category III operations. The Falcon 900EX received European and FAA Cat III approval early this year, allowing it to make approaches with a 50-foot decision height and 600-foot runway visual range. It also allows the aircraft to make a Cat I approach in Cat II conditions and provides guidance cues that help the pilot to escape from windshear. Meanwhile, two U.S. East Coast Falcon 2000 operators are in the final stages of Cat III approval, two more have formally started the approval process, and others are starting.

In February, Flight Dynamics was awarded a supplemental type certificate (STC) for an HGS on the Bombardier Challenger 604. Currently, the system is certificated for Category II conditions (100-foot decision height and 1,200-foot RVR) and can be used throughout the flight envelope. As well as providing landing guidance, the HGS can also display TCAS information. The Challenger installation is based on the HGS used on the closely related Canadair Regional Jet, which has been selected by eight operators.

Another Bombardier aircraft, the Global Express, has turned into a HUD battleground. The aircraft's avionics suite is provided by Sextant, and includes an optional Sextant HUD. BAE Systems, however, announced this summer that it has successfully sold its own HUD-which it calls the Visual Guidance System (VGS)-on the ultra-long-range jet. Tudor Investments of Oxford, CT, has chosen the VGS for its Global Express.

The VGS is based on the system which BAE Systems is supplying to American Airlines for its 737-800s. BAE Systems Canada (formerly Canadian Marconi) leads the marketing of the program and will provide field support and technical assistance. Aerospace Concepts Inc, a corporate aircraft support and completion center headquartered in Newport Beach, CA, will provide systems integration services and conduct FAA certification to Cat II conditions. (Kevin Hoffman, the head of ACI's Canadian operations, led the Global Express conceptual design team.) The system should be certificated in November.

BAE Systems Canada says that its survey showed that 75% of Global Express customers preferred its VGS to the Sextant HUD, and says that its product is lighter and has a fully digital interface.

BAE Systems' Global Express program is part of a market initiative that spreads across much of the company and includes a firm commitment to enhanced vision system (EVS) technology as a logical extension of the HUD. BAE Systems is also pushing the VGS as a retrofit option for older BAe 146 regional airliners, and is looking at two potential in-house EVS sensors.

In fact, it is getting harder to separate HUDs from EVS. Flight Dynamics was highly skeptical of the value of EVS technology a few years ago, and it was a Rockwell Collins engineer who flatly told this writer in the early 1990s that infrared (IR) EVS "doesn't work." However, Flight Dynamics and BAE Systems are now following the trail blazed by Kollsman and Gulfstream (see sidebar). Increasingly, the question is not whether EVS will arrive on HUD-equipped aircraft, but which sensor technologies will be first to hit the market at a price that will make them irresistible.

Flight Dynamics has an internal research and development program looking at EVS sensors, says Brandt. It is making progress, but the company is not ready to announce any firm decisions or teaming arrangements. However, Brandt says that the company is not looking for the "$900,000 solution We applaud what Gulfstream and Kollsman are doing, but we can't see a Falcon-size aircraft carrying that cost and equipment load."

BAE Systems is working with Cincinnati Electronics, a BAE Systems Canada subsidiary, to provide the Global Express with an EVS. Cincinnati Electronics has a background in low-cost IR sensors for scientific, industrial and field use and in airborne systems, including IR missile-launch warning systems for transports. It is now applying that expertise to the development of a low-cost IR sensor for the Global Express. BAE Systems hopes to be able to offer an EVS for the Global Express next year, for around $500,000-little more than the price of the HUD alone.

What is important about that price tag is that, If EVS is only marginally more expensive than the HUD, it does not need to offer major certificated benefits to be attractive. The other advantages of EVS-better situational awareness in 'black-hole' approaches, and its ability to detect other aircraft and ground vehicles, for example-will make it desirable.

However, BAE Systems is also looking at adding a millimeter-wave (94 GHz) radar to the EVS by 2002. BAE Systems Aircraft Contro, based in Santa Monica, CA-it was Marconi Astronics, and Lear Astronics before that-has been involved in millimeter-wave EVS for many years, having developed the radar for the FAA's Synthetic Vision System (SVS) program in the early 1990s. The BAE Systems unit has continued to develop 94 GHz technology under the U.S. Air Force's Autonomous Landing Guidance (ALG) program, and has reduced its cost to the point where it can challenge an IR-only solution.

BAE Systems plans a system that uses both radar and IR. The radar is used at long range and in bad weather. This allows the BAE EVS to work with a simple, low-cost IR sensor, which is adequate to help the pilot transition to visual conditions and provides all the advantages of IR on a clear night. Consequently, the BAE approach avoids the need for the specialized IR sensor used by Gulfstream.

Beyond EVS on large aircraft, the goal is to bring the benefits of both HUD and EVS to a much larger portion of the corporate fleet. The logical starting point is the new super midsize aircraft, typified by the Galaxy, Continental and Horizon. "They represent a phenomenal value," says Flight Dynamics' Brandt. "They're priced in the mid-teens, with cabins that are almost on the Gulfstream level." Flight Dynamics is working on HGS designs which will match the size and price of those aircraft. "We're on the trail of something that will work," he says.

Universal Avionics and Flight Visions, however, have teamed to develop a low-cost HUD that will fit smaller aircraft, and are unveiling it at NBAA. The UH-5000 should be available for delivery in late 2002. The manufacturers claim that it will equal the performance of the most modern HUDs in a smaller, less costly package.

Illinois-based Flight Visions is a relative newcomer to the HUD business, and has always focused on lower-cost systems. The company has developed commercial HUDs for retrofit to business aircraft such as the Falcon 20 and Citation series, but pulled back from that business in the late 1990s to concentrate on military requirements. Universal brings its knowledge of the general aviation and regional markets to the program.

Flight Visions president Robert Atac says that the company achieved a breakthrough in HUD efficiency in its recent military programs, developing designs which achieve a wide field of view with fewer lenses. "In our qualified, operational military HUDs, we get the same field of view as the competition with half the weight, two-thirds the size and half the cost of the competition." In its latest HUD design, for the Lockheed Martin X-35 Joint Strike Fighter prototype, Flight Visions has further advanced its technology, providing an extremely wide instantaneous field of view in the space normally required by a narrow-angle HUD.

Universal Avionics is developing a low-cost, low-volume computer to drive the new HUD. Designed for new aircraft, it will be all-digital, and designed to interface directly with advanced integrated avionics such as Pro Line 21 and Primus Epic. It will be roof-mounted and EVS-ready, with both raster and stroke displays, as affordable EVS sensors reach the market.

"Several OEMs are very anxious to move forward," says Universal EVP Chuck Edmonson. "We're in a position to start talking and working with them, in parallel with our certification program."

BAE Systems talks about 23,500 commercial aircraft, including corporate jets and regional aircraft, which could be candidates for a $250,000 HUD package. Brandt of Flight Dynamics is confident that the HUD and EVS will eventually become ubiquitous. Delta Air Lines, he says, has recently affirmed its intention to install HUDs across its entire fleet. "They're not doing this for Cat III," he says. "They are the first customers that have bought the system for situational awareness and safety. Major airlines get the attention of the people who fly in the back of a corporate jet, the financial decision-makers."