A framing case study examines Russia’s 2007 cyberattacks on Estonia. Then the chapter examines how states break international law. The chapter first discusses the law of state responsibility, including: (1) determining responsibility by assessing attribution and wrongfulness; and (2) the consequences of state responsibility, such as cessation, prevention, and reparation. The chapter then examines various theoretical accounts of why states break international law, including the enforcement, managerial, and flexibility perspectives.

A framing case study describes the Paris Climate Agreement and the worldwide movement to combat climate change. The chapter then discusses international environmental law. The chapter first discusses important concepts from environmental law, its historical evolution, and major principles. It then describes how states have attempted to protect the environment in the realm of the atmosphere, water, and living resources. Finally, the chapter examines how international environmental law interacts with topics discussed earlier in the book, including: trade, investment, human rights, and armed conflict.

The transition from research question to theory is a crucial part of producing a good empirical research paper. A good theory explains patterns in data with a well-articulated “because” clause that specifies a causal mechanism linking the independent variable to the dependent variable. A good theory also identifies the scope conditions and assumptions under which it operates. Developing your theory, articulating definitions of its concepts, and fully explicating its causal mechanism are key components of this process; these are critical for later stages. This is part of why the theory is such an important part of empirical research: without a carefully-thought-out theory, empirical research doesn’t make much sense.

Performance of aircraft addresses quantitative measurement of the flying vehicle’s capabilities, seeks its operation optimization, and pushes its flight limits. In this chapter, we continue the steady flight analysis with focus on operational performance. The steady climbing operation becomes the starting point, where the rate and angle are identified as main performance measures. Through statics, the measures are based on excess power that is further elaborated respectively based on two different representative engine types: jet and the propeller, and the optimal flying speeds are calculated respectively for each individual performance measure. The climbing naturally leads to the ceiling performance that covers the altitude envelope. After learning how high is the flight, we discussed how far and how long the flight can be (range and endurance).

In this chapter, we discuss performance measurements and analysis when the aircraft is engaged in maneuvering operations, which involve acceleration in motion. In addition, some other performance aspects related to accelerated flight are addressed to conclude our discussions in this performance part. Aircraft accelerated performance covers the accelerated motion in flight operation. A centripetal acceleration is required to sustain level or vertical turn, as such the aerodynamic lift needs to take extra responsibility not only to balance weight but also to provide additional force. The load factor is introduced. The V-n plot provides much-needed performance measures, and it is incorporated with other considerations: aerodynamic limits, structural limits, and so on. It provides a comprehensive picture of flight envelope. The acceleration also leads to the combined accelerated climbing discussion, from energy perspective, to enable the aircraft engage in speed change as well as altitude change, that one can jump from one energy height to the other.

Finally, the acceleration is well used to estimate takeoff and landing performance.

The closing chapter addresses the computational simulation of flight dynamics systems to verify and validate flight control design. The concept is to implement the designed flight controller into the closer-to-reality flight system and run extensive flight simulations in closer-to-reality emulated environment, so as to further assess the flight control system’s behavior. It is a critical stage in aircraft systems engineering process. Flight systems development follows a typical systems engineering process where the V-shape chart covers the top-down design steps followed by the bottom-up verification and validation steps. The simplified five-step procedure illustrates the key stages through the autopilot development. Flight systems simulation becomes highly integrated throughout the development. Full nonlinear flight dynamics allows the linear system based control design to be tested in a full nonlinear simulation environment with limited environmental variation, and flight simulator provides the opportunity of testing the design function in full system, including interactions and under a more comprehensive environmental influence.

In this chapter, we will cover some representative feedback flight control channels and autopilot functions. The focus is placed on the application of classical control theories to flight control field, and the physics insight of control effects from flight dynamics perspective. We focus on applying classical feedback control techniques to the flight dynamics to regulate aircraft motion to achieve some desired dynamic behavior. Four (4) representative classical control techniques are covered, that is, the PID control, the root-locus design, the lead, and lag compensators. Various single-input single-out channels (SISO systems) are selected to illustrate the usage of these methods. They may seem similar in the concept, by treating the object as the transfer function. However, the emphasis is placed upon the physics of these channels. It reminds us, again and again, we need to be flexible and adaptive in using these approaches, the flight dynamics is the key.

What is aircraft flight in Earth’s atmosphere about? What are the subjects of scientific study? What are first principles to understand and analyze flight? These are some of the questions that first-time learners are often asking. In the first and introductory chapter, we attempt to address these fundamental questions in a systematic, gradual approach to lead readers into this exciting domain with proper preparation. This chapter serves as an introduction to the subjects of atmospheric flight. By using a simple paper plane example, the concepts of dynamic behavior and relevant performance are illustrated. As a foundation for the study, the standard atmospheric model is introduced, followed by airspeed and its calibration. These models are developed by some first principle governing equations. Further, typical aircraft configurations and anatomy are described, with general terminology used in aviation.

The concept of linear quadratic control comes from the principle of optimization, that is to find a feasible control solution to achieve the best-possible (optimal) performance in terms of a certain objective function. When applied to flight control problems, the generic control objective function is expected to reflect desirable flight dynamic performance. Because of its well-structured design and generic objective function, the linear quadratic flight control becomes one of the most popular modern flight control methods, having the status almost equivalent to the PID control to the classical flight control. Linear quadratic flight control is to find an optimal solution to address the flight dynamics problem, not just for its regulation (going back to its equivalent state) or tracking (following a reference command) problem, but also in the sense of minimizing a performance index (an infinite time integral) J. The performance index takes a general quadratic scalar function format that covers both the “energy” of the flight states and the scale of control inputs, adjustable by parameter matrices Q, R of some properties.