ABSTRACT
The programme objectives were to demonstrate various technologies relevant to a future combat aircraft within the rigours imposed by having to achieve flight clearance and demonstration. Nearly all future combat aircraft will have an unstable basic airframe owing to the advantages that are accrued: smaller, lighter, and aerodynamically more efficient. The general layout of the cockpit was that of the modern single-seat combat aircraft. The stability feedbacks being thus defined, the next task was to design the handling of the aircraft. The aircraft also exhibited good tracking behaviour against ground targets and also in air-to-air tasks although the air combats experience was limited to a few flights. The Experimental Aircraft Programme (EAP) aircraft was demonstrated with these control laws at the Paris Airshow of 1987. The structural model was based on the standard EAP flutter model, a finite-element-based structural model coupled with unsteady aerodynamics to form the flexible aircraft matrix equations of motion.
