Do you say technology map/tree to illustrate key technology areas/sub-areas that would need to be mastered? That would give the readers an idea of the length and breadth of the effort required.
For instance:
-
Aerodynamics
- Sub-area
- Sub-area
-
Structure
- Sub-area
- Sub-area
-
Flight Control
- Sub-area
- Sub-area
If we arrange it in dependencies with each other. PDF will actually be proposing a technology roadmap hopefully to readers in position of decision making
I don't know nearly enough about all of these fields to make such a tree on my own. I actually attempted to make one some time ago and quickly realized how ill-equipped I was for the task. I'm a controls guy and therefore end up focusing on controls more than anything. I am acutely aware of the need for expertise in all the other fields, but I only have surface knowledge and don't know what's needed exactly in them. I don't know if we have experts in other fields on this forum.
However, I can attempt to make a list of fields one would need to run something like Project Azm:
- Structures
- Dynamics and Vibration
- Composite Structures
- Optimization of Structures
- Materials
- Composites
- Metallurgy
- Fatigue Modelling
- Crack Propagation and Modelling
- Thin films
- High-temperature alloys
- Single-crystal manufacturing
- Industrial and Operations
- Supply-chain management
- Assembly line operations
- Jigs and fixtures
- Aerodynamics
- Subsonic, transonics, supersonic, and hypersonics
- Flutter
- Heat transfer
- Computational Fluid Dynamics
- Wind tunnel testing
- Electronics
- GPU programming
- FPGA programming
- Microcontroller programming
- Manufacturing of board, IO, cables, harnesses
- Optics
- EW
- SIGINT
- Honestly too much to list so going to give up now lol
- Radars
- RF circuits
- Power electronics
- Different frequency bands and their associated component design
- Cooling
- Signal processing
- Control Systems
- Classical control
- Adaptive control
- Model Predictive control
- Robust control
- Nonlinear control
- Embedded control
- Digital control
- Instrumentation
- MEMS Gyroscopes
- MEMS Accelerometers
- Pressure transducers
- Optical sensors
- Mechanical sensors
- Filtering and estimation
- Sensor placement
- Sensor fusion
- Flight Dynamics
- Dynamics and simulation
- Flight dynamics of aircraft, missiles
- Control design for aircraft
- Systems
- System integration
- Flight control system architectures
- Hardware architectures
- Ergonomics
- User interface design
- Cockpit design
- Haptic feedback
This list doesn't even scratch the surface and I basically gave up towards the end because I have work to do lol. Also, these kinds of lists may be long but usually engineers (such as myself) are well versed in many of these things. So for example I may be a controls person but I am well versed in flight dynamics, sensor fusion, estimation, flutter as well. So you will need to get groups of people who will all do a little bit of this, a little bit of that.
I see for quite long time there is no Pakistani journalist ever make an extensive article about AZM project and ask many important question to Pakistan Aerospace (PAC KAMRA) official. It will be quite interesting to make an article about it as many Pakistani are quite curious about it.
I believe with so many Pakistani members are here, there could be some who work as journalist. Maybe their current desk is not in aviation, technology, or defense, but at least they can make one, considering many journalist have important contact or at least eligible to ask for interview due to their press pass. If they can make the article and being published somewhere, it will be helpful if they can put the news here.
Unfortunately, there are aspects of our military/national culture that don't lend well to such efforts. I have tried many times to ask insightful questions to people working at PAC but almost always I have been met with vague answers. Their motives I can only guess but seem to be the following:
1. Are you a spy or something asking all these questions?
2. Are you a bloody civilian who doesn't know anything about these things asking these questions to sound cool? (well our military journalism is quite bad as well).
PAC is happy to do fluff pieces like we see on news channels but as soon as you try to probe a tiny bit technically (as someone from this forum might) they get extremely defensive and dismissive.