2009 Ken Edwards

2009 submission for Prof Ken Edwards OBE, QinetiQ, UK
(European Chapter) for the "Kelly" Johnson award for an individual

Ken Edwards has been active in the field of flight testing since 1979 as a natural progression of being an Avionic Systems Engineer with GEC Avionics. He started weapon and avionic flight testing at a range with one observation tower and no ground instrumentation, testing a complex aircraft installation with the only recorder being a 2-minute HUD wet film camera. Now he commonly works with a plethora of ground instrumentation, telemetry and hours of on-board video and digital data recording capacity.

In 1979 Ken was one of two Systems/Trials engineers integrating a Ranging Radar, Air Data Computer (ADC), AHRS, Doppler Navigator, Radar Altimeter, Mission Computer, HUD and Back-Up Navigation System on a Dagger (Israeli Mirage) for the Argentine Air Force. Initial successful trials in Israel led to full flight trials in Argentina. After a few months the trials were interrupted by the Falklands War, during which period it was not deemed to be a good thing for an Englishman to be enhancing Argentine weaponry, thus bringing to an end an erstwhile successful installation and trials programme. The customer had made no allowance for telemetry or data recording. Thus, as a HUD engineer, Ken made maximum use of the HUD by placing ground markers either side of straight line features, so that angular separation could be measured from the HUD camera recording, and range, and finally aircraft position and angles, could be calculated in order to check accurately the performance of the navigation system parameters.

In 1984 and 1985 Ken worked on all testing aspects of the installation and flight trials of an extensive digital avionic upgrade in an Egyptian MiG 21, which included new ADC, Rad Alt, HUD, Control Panel and Weapon Aiming Computer. He wrote the Pilots Notes and Trials Sortie Notes, surveyed the Weapons Range, briefed/debriefed the test pilots, observed, measured and calculated the accuracy of various types of air-to-ground weapon delivery, advised on system corrections and wrote the Trials Summary Document, acceptance of which allowed system production to start. He also ran all on-site work, including measuring the weapon impacts at the range, which was distant from the nearest town, in a sandy desert, with no tracking radar, kinetheodolites or any ground control. The only air or ground recording medium was 2 minutes of HUD wet film camera. Thus, entirely alone, Ken bought a surveying theodolite, taught himself surveying and laid out a series of ground markers on the desert. The markers were up to 1000 ft apart and surveyed to the nearest inch. He worked with the HUD software engineers to display the primary and secondary weapon aiming calculation parameters on the HUD for approximately 0.1 seconds at the time of weapon release. He also wrote and tested a (Fortran) photogrammetry programme, into which he input the measured HUD film angular positions of the markers at the time of weapon release (bombs, guns and rockets). This enabled critical weapon aiming avionic parameters to be accurately ascertained at the time of weapon release, thus enabling a surprisingly accurate air-to-ground weapon performance to be achieved. He measured air-to-air snapshoot accuracy by requesting the pilots to fly at dusk and to fire the gun with a 1 in 6 tracer loading, This enabled bullet flow to be seen on the HUD camera and compared against the HUD snapshoot line. Even the ADC static source error correction (of greater than 1000 ft at M 1.0) was matched using the wet film camera. His photogrammetry technique paper won best-of-session award at the 1989 Long Island SFTE conference.

In 1986 Ken organised and flight-tested the integration and flight trials of a HUD, Weapon Aiming Computer and Air Data Computer on an F-4E in the USA, once again performing all aspects of the trial work including trials, customer and aircrew liaison and trials reporting.

In the early '90s Ken performed a similar flight testing job on an F-5E & F in the Far East, once again with entire responsibility for the air-to-air and air-to-ground weapon delivery accuracy of the avionic refit.

Then followed a period of flight testing of one of the first civil use Enhanced Vision Systems (forward facing camera image displayed on a HUD). This was on a light twin in the USA, during which Ken logged some hours of real blind flying time, performing approach, flare, landing and rollout completely blind, i.e. using HUD imagery and symbology alone.

There followed a move from Industry into the Civil Service, to the erstwhile royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, now QinetiQ. His first flight trial was the testing of the research visually-coupled system on a Lynx helicopter in the mid '90s. The system was large, with 12 boxes on a 1553B databus. Ken led the installation and testing, and performed the design and testing of the Helmet-Mounted Display symbology, and flight trial data analysis. For this programme he had a number of hours in the front seat, evaluating the system during low level flight and hover. This led to considerable follow-on research work. He then worked closely with NASA Ames on the design and flight testing of a series of limited field of view helicopter low-level mission task elements, presenting a joint paper with NASA to the Royal Aeronautical Society.

Ken's team introduced the transmission of Close Air Support (CAS) targeting data from being sent by voice over the radio to being sent digitally over the radio. A considerable amount of flight testing ensued on a Jaguar aircraft at Boscombe Down, leading to a flight demonstration with the Chief of the Air Staffand the capability being introduced into service in the RAF.

The digital CAS work led to major UK research installation and flight testing, led by Ken, requiring three annual flight testing and demonstration periods based on the Predator A, the first two in China Lake and the third in the UK. The first two periods required liaison with the RAF, General Atomics, the UAV Battlelab at Eglin, the US Navy and the China Lake ranges. Ken organised and oversaw the trials, performing control centre communication coordination during the trials themselves. These were centred on Predator-sourced China Lake real-time target data and imagery being marked up and transmitted via a UK Predator payload which facilitated digital targeting communication between UK FAC and Jaguar aircraft, USN F-14 and a Battletab F-16 from Nellis. The testing culminated in both ballistic and laser-guided weapon release against various ground targets. The third phase required very nimble thinking, and a quick platform change to a UK-based BAC 1-11 due to the trials Predator being required to support the response to 9/11.

Ken's most predominant recent flight test achievement has been as Technical Lead and Flight Test Manager to install and test a data link on a UK Enhanced Paveway 2 weapon. Ken worked with the UK MoD to bring the programme into being, and with Raytheon Missile Systems to define the weapon requirement. Flight testing comprised working with China Lake, the UK MoD, RAF and Air Warfare Centre and Raytheon. A radio-controlled tank was mensurated with an automatic ground tracking and laser ranging equipment designed by Ken's team. The modified EPW2 was released from a UK Tornado GR4 fast jet and successfully and accurately GPS-guided to the moving target, with 1 Hz updates to the weapon from the ground equipment. This demonstrated a major step forward in UK capability and proved part of the concept for the UK's next air-to-ground stand-off datalinked weapon. As a result of this success, follow-on work has ensued.

 In 1987 and '88 Ken attended meetings in Holland and the UK to establish the European SFTE chapter (with Wim Dijkshoorn being the driving Force). In 1988 Ken hosted and made all the arrangements for the 1St European Chapter meeting where he worked at Rochester (from which humble beginning the annual meeting has evolved to the magnificent forum which it has become). Ken has presented a number of SFTE papers and is a Senior Member. He received an OBE (from the Queen) for services to UK Industry and is a QinetiQ Fellow.