Cockpit displays for a knowledge-based system: the intelligent air attack system

The author describes the intelligent air-attack system (IAAS), a prototype integrated-avionics system in the advanced development phase, which is intended for integration into attack aircraft in the early 1990s. The prototype IAAS will serve as an assistant to the crew by helping with three critical tasks: (1) classification of ship targets at long range; (2) detection, identification, and countering or evasion of in-the-air missile threats; and (3) on-the-fly strike management and strike-plan modification. IAAS will extract and correlate sensor data from aircraft data bus signals, and fuse it into a `best-picture-of-the-world´ database. After using a knowledge-based program to determine the specific information needed for current tasks, the system will format this information into intuitively-recognizable pictorial displays for rapid, accurate aircrew understanding and response