Synthetic-vision systems developed for civil aviation to improve safety in reduced visibility are moving into the military arena, with tests of systems to help helicopter pilots land in rotor-blown dust and other degraded visual environments. Under a U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) program, Honeywell has completed flight tests that fused a stored terrain database with real-time sensor data to provide the pilot with a three-dimensional view of the outside word in poor visibility. The tests, in a U.S. Army Sikorsky UH-60, combined a millimeter-wave (MMW) radar developed under Dar-pa's Multi-Function Radio-Frequency project with a processing system from the Synthetic Vision Avionics Backbone (SVAB) project and based on Honeywell's commercial SmartView synthetic vision system.
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