First Flight | ACE

ITPS Canada introduced ACE to the global flight test community at the Society of Experimental Test Pilots’ 70th Annual Symposium in Anaheim, California.

Giorgio Clementi, Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer, and Bennett Leong, ACE Project Lead, presented the journey of the Advanced Controls Evaluator (ACE) from concept and engineering through simulation, flight test preparation and first flight.

But ACE is about much more than variable stability. It is the first of several advanced aircraft that will progressively form the core of our instructional fleet as we make fly-by-wire aircraft integral to the ITPS training environment. It represents a transformative step in how ITPS trains the flight testers of tomorrow—bringing digital fly-by-wire, advanced control laws, state-of-the-art cockpit HMI and in-flight simulation into an operationally relevant jet training environment. ACE will allow students not only to experience different handling qualities, but to evaluate the control laws (CLAWS) that create them, while operating in the speed, energy, workload and time pressures of a jet.

Integrated into the syllabus with the advanced HMI already introduced in our 5STA Hunter, engineering simulation, and our COGNITIV6™ AI/ML capability, ACE is part of a broader transformation of flight test education at ITPS.

This video tells the story of the people, engineering and collaboration behind ACE – and our vision for preparing the next generation of test pilots and flight test engineers for the technologies they will be called upon to evaluate. Training today for where aerospace technology is going next.