Aircraft Anchoring Device (AAD)

Eliminating manual activities for aircraft tie-down will have significant benefit in reducing carrier manning. A robotic approach would not be practical as manning replaced by robots may be offset by added robot maintenance crew, not to mention that mobile robots may jam the deck space and deck mount robots may impose significant Ship-Alts. INNOVATEX INC proposes an Aircraft Anchoring Device (AAD). The aircraft drops down some suction cups to grab the deck surface just like a ship dropping anchors to grab the ocean floor. Although this approach involves some modifications on the aircraft but the benefit is huge. Phase I effort focuses on demonstrating the concept and developing the control mechanism. Our initial calculation indicated that a 21 inch diameter AAD can hold against 10,000 lbs of pulling force. Depending on the wind over deck, about 6-18 AADs are required to hold down a 60,000 lb aircraft. The design challenge is to make the AAD light weight and foldable so that it can be easily carried by the aircraft. This approach involves no changes on the aircraft carriers.