A new fault detection scheme for aircraft Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensors is developed in this paper. This scheme adopts a deep neural network with a CNN-LSTM-fusion architecture (CNN: convolution neural network; LSTM: long short-term memory). The fault detection network (FDN) developed in this paper is irrelative to aircraft model or flight condition. Flight data is reformed into a 2D format for FDN input and is mapped via the net to fault cases directly. We simulate different aircrafts with various flight conditions and separate them into training and testing sets. Part of the aircrafts and flight conditions appears only in the testing set to validate robustness and scalability of the FDN. Different architectures of FDN are studied, and an optimized architecture is obtained via ablation studies. An average detecting accuracy of 94.5% on 20 different cases is achieved.

Aircraft sensors are crucial for ensuring the safe and efficient operation of aircraft. However, these sensors are vulnerable to external factors that can lead to malfunctions, making fault diagnosis essential. Traditional deep learning-based fault diagnosis methods often face challenges, such as limited data representation and insufficient feature extraction. To address these problems, this paper proposes an enhanced GraphSage-based fault diagnosis method that incorporates attention mechanisms. First, signal data representing the coupling characteristics of various sensors are constructed through data stacking. These signals are then transformed into graph data with a specific topology reflecting the overall sensor status of the aircraft using K-nearest neighbor and Radius classification algorithms. This approach helps fully leverage the correlations between data points. Next, node and neighbor information is aggregated through graph sampling and attention-based aggregation methods, strengthening the extraction of fault features. Finally, fault diagnosis is performed using multi-layer aggregation and transformation within fully connected layers. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms baseline approaches, achieving better detection performance and faster computational speed. The method has been validated on both simulated and real-flight data.

The autonomous air combat (AAC) technique has been a lasting topic for decades. Accurate opponent trajectory prediction provides a fundamental basis for decision making in AAC. In this work, we propose a knowledge-driven scheme for the opponent trajectory prediction problem in one-versus-one gun-dominated within-visual-range (WVR) air combat. A dedicated air combat engagement database is first constructed via skilled human pilots flying WVR air combat. Two baseline algorithms following rule-based and learning-based paradigms are developed and optimized. The knowledge-driven scheme begins with defining handcrafted features extracted from the opponent history movements, and principal components analysis is adopted to compress/refine the features. A generalized regression neural network is then developed to compensate for the residual of the rule-based trajectory prediction method, wherein the refined features are used as inputs, and the residual compensation are used as outputs. Via extensive simulation tests, the proposed scheme shows a more accurate performance as compared with the two other baseline algorithms. To demonstrate the applicability of the proposed scheme, an automatic gun-firing strategy for commencing gun attack in AAC is also illustrated, which justifies the proposed scheme.

In within-visual-range (WVR) air combat, basic fighter maneuvers (BFMs) are widely used. A BFM decision support scheme has been proposed to aid human pilots in the complex air combat engagement. Recent artificial intelligence advances provide novel opportunities for the development of BFM decision support research. This paper commences by establishing an air-combat-engagement database. Key features that pilots rely on for BFM decision-making in WVR air combat are analyzed, which identifies the input and output data essential for the development of the BFM decision support scheme. A Long Short-Term-Memory (LSTM)-based BFM decision support scheme is then proposed to map input (i.e., combat situations) to output (i.e., BFM decision). Additionally, Shapley-Additive-Explanations-based explainability analysis is also employed to assess the importance of each input feature in the LSTM blocks, and to explain the contribution of each feature to the BFM decision. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed BFM decision support scheme, WVR air-combat tests are conducted, which justify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.