A robust control design for the longitudinal control of a high performance combat aircraft

The performance of a modern combat aircraft is enhanced by making the aircraft statically unstable. The pitch rate dynamics of such an aircraft are therefore open-loop unstable and the aircraft requires a stability augmentation system (SAS) to increase the value of a number of stability derivatives to achieve the required flying and handling qualities specifications. In this paper, a novel design technique is presented for a pitch rate SAS for such an aircraft.