EXCERPT FROM VEHICLE PLATFORMS IN ORD

• Document Type: SPECIALCOLLECTION
• Collection: Aquiline
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 06833173
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: July 16, 2020
• Document Release Date: July 30, 2020
• Publication Date: April 1, 1994

Approved for Release: 2020/02/11 C06833173
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Personal recollections
Vehicle Platforms in the
Office of Research and Development
Charles N. Adkins
The day Sputnik went into orbit in 1957, I was inter-
viewing with Melpar, Inc., primarily an electronics firm,
in Falls Church, Vir inia. The needed a �h
work on a contract
em e
ear y an several contracts with the Agency's
newly formed Office of Research and Development
(ORD), located in the Ames Building in Rosslyn, Vir-
ginia.
In 1966 I joined ORD to work on the Aquiline project.
This was to be a small unmanned vehicle, shaped like a
bird, that would augment the U-2 as a reconnaissance
platform. Its major asset supposedly was its low cost.
As a contractor, I had briefed Bud Wheelon, the Deputy
Director for Science and Technology, on several occa-
sions, and I asked him how the U-2 was developed. He
said, "It was very simple, we found the best aerodynam-
icist in the business, Kelly Johnson, and told him to
build the most reliable vehicle that would get our sen-
sors over the target and home again." Unfortunately,
this was not to be the strategy for developing Aquiline.
ORD was an ad hoc group with no official charter. Its
primary assets were a few dynamic individuals with
vivid imaginations. Two such people were Dave
Christ, the division chief and driving force behind Aqui-
line, and Don Reiser, his deputy. Many were new
employees like Frank Briglia, hired.as project manager
for Aquiline, and C. V. Noyes, who, as a potential con-
tractor, wrote such a good proposal that Dave decided it
would be cheaper to hire him.
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Dave Christ was good at identifying advanced concepts
and a master at selling to upper management. Don
Reiser could milk the most from technical people and
contractors. His efforts in low-voltage transistors and
micropower electronics were among the first significant
successes in ORD.
The third important member of this team was a consult-
ant named A mathematician by nature
and an electronics engineer by trade,
My addition to this team was to fill the gap in aerody-
namics and to feed Dave's dream of a family of vehicle
platforms that would span the next 20 years. The first
two were Aquiline and its little-known successor, Axil-
lary.
The Aquiline Project
Dave Christ delighted in describing his first meeting
with Douglas Aircraft: "1 told them we wanted an
unmanned aircraft that would fly over 1,000 miles,
have an autopilot with complete on-board navigation, a
payload of a few pounds for taking pictures or collect-
ing intelligence of one kind or another, a wing span of
only 10 feet or so, and look like a bird."
The first challenge was to construct an initial opera-
tional capability (IOC) vehicle that looked like a large
model airplane. The first attempts to fly the IOC ended
in crashes, and I mentioned to Frank Briglia that the
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ORD
Douglas team knew nothing of the sport of making and
flying radio control (RC) aircraft and that perhaps they
needed such a person on the team.
Douglas did try to fly model airplanes, but their test
pilots had little skill in RC flying and more crashes fol-
lowed. Frank concluded that the solution was to forego
further RC tests and to push ahead on the autopilot
development that he felt would avert further problems
of human error. He wanted the next flight to be fully
automatic.
As the flight test grew near, Don and I
left for the test site at China Lake, California. The facil-
ities, the flight planning, and the previous test results
were impressive, and the Douglas team was confident
that a successful flight would vindicate the past failures
and large costs that had plagued the project.
The countdown the next day seemed to take forever.
Finally, the engine was started, and the vehicle's umbili-
cal cable was disconnected from the site trailer. Once
the vehicle was launched, it passed over the edge of a
cliff, rotated 90*, nose down, and disappeared from
view. Those who walked to the cliffs edge knew what
they would see on the rocks below.
Back at Ames, we received the call from Douglas
explaining that the longitudinal accelerometer had expe-
rienced high acceleration as the vehicle traveled down
the launcher. This caused the autopilot to believe the
nose was pointed up, and the control surfaces were in
the nose down position as it passed over the edge of the
cliff.
Don Reiser obtained all test data and auto ilot schemat-
ics from Douglas and told me and to com-
plete a full stability and control analysis as soon as
possible. I told Frank Briglia that the analysis showed
no stability margin at all and that, in all probability, the
vehicle would have crashed in the last test even if the
accelerometer had been properly locked out during
launch. This analysis was soon confirmed by Douglas,
saying they overlooked the necessity of giving the lat-
est autopilot parameters to their control system analyst.
A running battle soon developed with Dave Christ and
Don Reiser putting great pressure on Frank to take a
firmer hand with Douglas. Eventually, Frank elevated
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himself to unsupervised director of the project. I lost
contact at this point, but I was not surprised some years
later when Aquiline was "mothballed" with a price tag
of $30 million.
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