The CIGTF Connection: A Story of Precision Testing at the Central Inertial Guidance Test Facility

Fredric Nadeau

Abstract:	The Central Inertial Guidance Test Facility (CIGTF) has been in existence for 36 years as the Air Force’s center of expertise in testing guidance, MVigCdiOn, navigation-aids, and space-positioning sensors and systems. CIGTF has undergone several official name changes over its history and its functions have increased to encompass testing for not only Department of Defense customers, but also the Department of Transportation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Defense Nuclear Agency, foreign governments’ defense departments, and commercial and aerospace corporations. Over the years, the expertise has continually matured, test facilities have been periodically upgraded to maintain the leading edge of technology, and test techniques and analysis and test reference instrumentation have been improved to keep up with the customer accuracy requirements. Most of the U.S. strategic and tactical missile guidance, air vehicle navigation, and space base vehicle positioning sensors and systems have been tested at CIGTF prior to being placed into the field or operational use. CIGTF’s primary role is to serve the military services to conduct developmental test and evaluation @T&E) of prototypes, pre-and production systems; however, CIGTF has also played a major role in field operational, performance assessments of the services intercontinental ballistic missile and tactical missile guidance systems. Shortly after its establishment, CIGTF was given a charter to test aircraft navigators prior to being procured for inventory and in the 90s was given the Responsible Test Organization responsibility for Global Positioning System (GPS) user equipment and tasked to support the Air Force’s Project 2000 to integrate and test GPS user equipment in Air Force aircraft. This paper provides the history of this organization from its establishment to its current stature.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 51st Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1995) June 5 - 7, 1995 Antlers Doubletree Hotel Colorado Springs, CO
Pages:	283 - 292
Cite this article:	Nadeau, Fredric, "The CIGTF Connection: A Story of Precision Testing at the Central Inertial Guidance Test Facility," Proceedings of the 51st Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1995), Colorado Springs, CO, June 1995, pp. 283-292.
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