Twenty-two years of non-embarked land-based United States Marine Corps(USMC) Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) incidents across the world wereanalyzed including the number of fatalities, injuries and aircraft lost, withspecial emphasis on operations in Degraded Visual Environments (DVE)resulting in the pilot’s loss of situation awareness. The resulting analysis showedthat DVE accidents account for the highest loss of life and injury rate whencompared to other accident causes. In addition, the USMC loses, on average,more than $66 million dollars annually due to DVE accidents with the pilot atfault, which occur primarily at night and in reduced visibility settings. Humansare inherently limited by perceptual abilities in such operations and no amountof training will be able to overcome this inherent physical limitation. We positthat such statistics make a compelling case for increased autonomy in VTOLoperations in DVE for both manned and unmanned aircraft. Autonomouslandings and operations close to the earth could result in both significant costsavings to the USMC (and other services) and a substantial reduction in injuryand fatalities.
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