NAWCAD is searching for sources so as to add Computerized Floor Collision Avoidance System (AGCAS) to the F/A-18E/F Tremendous Hornet and EA-18G Growler.
The U.S. Navy is beginning the preliminary work for the combination of an Computerized Floor Collision Avoidance System (AGCAS) functionality on the F/A-18E/F Tremendous Hornet and EA-18G Growler. The information, first reported by the Aviation Week, highlights the service’s effort to extend the protection of its platforms, defending the aircrews towards errors and incapacitation.
AGCAS Integration
The Naval Air Warfare Middle Plane Division (NAWCAD) launched a sources sought discover on Nov. 10, 2025, in help of PMA209 Air Fight Electronics Program Workplace. In keeping with the discover, as a part of the Tactical Plane Shifting Map Functionality (TAMMAC) program, the service is in search of “a software program answer to combine and redesign the Digital Map Pc (DMC)/Digital Video Map Pc (DVMC), and Flight Management Pc (FCC) in help of the F/A-18 E/F & EA-18/G Computerized Floor Collision Avoidance Techniques (AGCAS) program.”
“Avionics upgrades to Naval Aviation platforms are required to make sure compliance with present security and airworthiness necessities,” says the service. Within the fiscal 12 months 2026 funds request the Navy famous Auto GCAS is a “important security enchancment that might have prevented a number of deadly F/A-18 mishaps over the previous 20 years.”
Particularly, “the redesign will combine a brand new Automated Terrain Consciousness Warning System (ATAWS) software program module and Interface Design Doc (IDD). The Tremendous Hornet have already got a Terrain Consciousness Warning System (TAWS) which alerts the pilot of potential Managed Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) dangers, hosted within the DMC and DVMC.
The present system solely alerts the pilots of potential CFIT incidents and offers steerage to keep away from them. The improve would now automate that, permitting the plane to mechanically get well from potential CFIT, which is extraordinarily helpful within the occasion the pilot is incapacitated.
Aviation Week famous how each stakeholders and lawmakers have known as on the Navy to put in an Auto GCAS system. The trouble was additionally a part of the Home’s model of the fiscal 2026 protection coverage invoice, with lawmakers requiring the Navy to stipulate an acquisition strategy by March 2026.
AGCAS Usefulness
Other than human errors resembling goal fixation, there are some conditions during which AGCAS could be important to save lots of each the plane and the crew. These are Spatial Disorientation and G-induced Loss Of Consciousness (GLOC).
Spatial Disorientation is the lack to find out one’s place, location, and movement relative to their surroundings. This could occur not solely in fighter jets, however in each sort of plane, each army and civilian.
A state of affairs that generally causes Spatial-D is the flight in Instrument Meteorological Situations (IMC), the place unhealthy visibility circumstances would forestall a pilot from utilizing exterior reference factors and, in some instances, his senses would cease to “agree” with the present perspective of the plane. For an occasion, the pilot’s senses could possibly be tricked to suppose the plane is in stage flight, whereas in actuality it’s in an inverted dive.
GLOC might occur throughout maneuvers with excessive g-loading, which draw blood away from the mind and in the direction of the decrease a part of the physique. GLOC is just not utterly sudden, as it’s preceded by tunnel imaginative and prescient, greyout and blackout.
Whereas the sooner phases would solely see a pilot quickly visually impaired, GLOC is a whole incapacitation. In keeping with statistics, this incapacitation averages 12 seconds, adopted by 15 seconds of restoration from the occasion.
In these instances, AGCAS would take over the controls and get well the plane to keep away from a collision with the terrain. Normally, this would come with the pc rolling to wings-level after which pulling up, away from the terrain.
The system contains of advanced algorithms that make the most of exact navigation, plane efficiency and on-board digital terrain knowledge to find out if a floor collision is imminent. The AGCAS software program is executed within the background, able to take over at a second’s discover.
In 2022, the U.S. Air Drive stated AGCAS has been credited for saving 12 F-16s and three F-22s from crashing, with spatial disorientation being the most typical trigger for the damaging perspective that triggered the automated restoration. The service additionally says CFIT incidents account for 26 p.c of plane losses, highlighting how a know-how resembling AGCAS could possibly be vital to enhance the protection of flight.
