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Aircraft Ship Operations

The combination of ships and aircraft
into a war fighting system may be the best
oossible exemulification of the word
synergism. Certainly, worldwide interest in
the use of shipborne aircraft as a major
weapons system is very broad. Many NATO
countries operate fixed wing aircraft from
ships. By 1988, as the AGARD symposium on
the Aircraft Ship Interface was being
planned, the United States, England, France,
an Italv all had fixed_wino caoable aircraft
carriers. Since then Spain has been added
to the list with the completion of the
Principe de Asturias and France has laid
plans for both new carriers and new carrier-
based fixed wing aircraft.

Additionally, the use of ships as
helicopter platforms is extensive in the
NATO community and brings another import
dimension to the aircraft/ship interface
issue. The helicopter is fast approaching a
half century of service as a weapons system.

From humble beginnings in World War iI,
largely in the roles of observation
platforms and search and rescue vehicles,
rotorcraft have evolved to a principal force
in the modern battle scenario. In the war
at sea, the helicopter‘ forms an integral
part of a task force capable of launching
devastating firepower at surface and
subsurface targets. Aided by communications
and data links, the helicopter effectively
becomes the extended sensor of the task
force itself. Technology has made the
helicopter into a tank killer, troop
transport and night observation platform.

In the most unlikely arena, air-to-air
combat, modern weaponry has shown the
helicopter to be effective against even high
performance tactical aircraft. Certain
weapons and tactics have permitted the
exploitation of the helicopter’s unique
ability to point and aim rapidly. These
factors coupled with the low comparative
cost of the helicopter, has given it a
significant role in many national arsenals.
Thus, it seemed that both fixed wing and
rotary wing aviation deserved equal billing
in the Aircraft/Ship Interface Symposium
which is the subject of this Technical
Evaluation Report. This symposium was held
in Seville, Spain, from 20 to 23 May l99l
and was the first symposium sponsored by the
AGARD Flight Mechanics Panel devoted to this
topic.