The main objective of the first builders of flying machines was to fly; the question of handling qualities was not so important as the question of performance. But when the fight against weight began to be won, the pilots wanted to fly easily. This was a reasonable requirement but very difficult to comply with because everybody had their own opinion about the meaning of “easily”. The engineers added some confusion by introducing mathematics. After many years of discussion during which everybody talked about Cm, Cmq,stability and manoeuvrability, the engineers won the battle and prescribed the holy regulations that they wanted and that they hoped would be eternal. For instance the centre of gravity lost its freedom and was assigned a position always ahead of the neutral point.

A lecture on the background of the MRCA project was presented to the Society three years ago, at which time most of the basic definition of this trinational project had been completed. The development of the programme in terms of performance, cost and schedule has in the meantime been essentially in accordance with the plans established during 1969.

The overall scope of these plans are mainly contained in the decade of the seventies (Fig. 2). Development started in mid-1970 and series production deliveries will have reached the full target rate in the last quarter of the decade. Also the eighties will see substantial employment of our industries on this project if the aircraft proves as good in performance and price as is intended.

The use of specialised equipment is common to many sports from tennis to car racing, but in no other sport has this equipment been developed to such a degree of sophistication as it has in gliding. Naturally, together with technical progress there has come equally sophisticated piloting techniques, and an understanding of the air which has been, in some areas, ahead of that possessed by acknowledged experts.

The first gliding competition—if it could be called such —was held in 1920, 53 years ago in the period of exhaustion following the First World War. It consisted of a few dedicated enthusiasts who had got together with their rudimentary home-builts on the Wasserkuppe mountain and who wanted, quite simply, to fly. The aircraft were mainly hang gliders, not much advanced over those used by Pilcher and Lilienthal at the end of the previous century, and using the same method of control—shifting of body weight. The builders appeared to have obtained little profit from wartime aeroplane experience except perhaps in the achievement of a slightly less feather-friend shape; but they were still on the side of the birds in that live legs were used for take-off and landing.

Since our national economy depends, to an extent, on the successful completion of the design, marketing and selling of major industrial projects, one sees more exacting demands placed on the completion of these projects on time. For example we have seen the advent of increased Ministerial requirements on the estimations of development costs and programmes with the subsequent stricter control of the costs and programmes of advanced technological projects. In order to facilitate the implementation of the requirements specified in the Downey Report, and in particular, industry's own monitoring and programming, we have seen the development of network analysis management techniques.

Projects having slipped several months or even years tend to incur escalated costs and consequently one sees a loss in overall profit, lost future orders, etc. It would be more than useful, therefore to estimate a probability function of completing a project by a specified date in order that more realistic planning can be executed.

In recent years considerable advances in the field of “optimal control” have been made. The impetus behind many of these advances has been derived from a growing demand that not only is it desirable, but also essential, that the design of a control system be optimised. This is particularly true of the aerospace industry in which the specification laid before the control systems designer usually demands the best possible performance for minimum cost (be that cost financial, on fuel, or on weight). Short of a major technological innovation, the problem becomes one of finding some means of meeting an ever increasing demand for performance, using existing technology. More attention has therefore been given in recent years to the study of optimal control, particularly since the advent of high speed, sophisticated scientific digital computers. Two of the major areas which have been explored have been the optimal design of systems, according to a quadratic performance criterion, and non-linear programming techniques. These are briefly discussed in Section 3 of this paper.

This paper outlines the aircraft designer's role and problems in airliner flight deck design. The impact of this has a significant effect on the final result, notwithstanding the desires and academic assumptions which are constantly being applied as being the “right” way to carry out this immensely difficult task of trying to please everybody, yet with the restraints of a defined operational role and an economic timescale.

It must be remembered that the “ideal” aircraft would never get off the ground and the over complex aircraft would have a good attempt at staying there.