The Standard Inertial Navigation Set - A Decade of Progress

Jeremy Lewi

Abstract:	In 1975 the United States Air Force decided to institute a policy to develop a Standard Inertial Navigation Set in order to reduce the number of different types of INS in the inventory and the resultant high cost of ownership. There have now been three competitions for the systems resulting from this policy decision and such systems are now in use or in integration for a total of ten different aircraft types, utilizing three different systems manufactured by two different suppliers. The reliability of these systems is significantly better than earlier systems. Thus it can be argued that the Air Force has gone a long way toward achieving the goals it set out a decade ago. The systems in use have evolved from joint user - developer - manufacturer agreements as to the characteristics such standards should embody. The result has been systems that have an extremely versatile set of input-output capabilities, both analog and digital. Although newer aircraft will tend to require only digital outputs, the availability of the analog signals have made the systems very useful for retrofit programs. In fact, the standards are being used in more retrofit applications than new production aircraft. Although not the same system, the Navy has also adopted a similar philosophy and has significantly reduced the number of navigation system types -compared to what would have happened had no standardization policy been adopted. To the extent of their requirements, the Army has used the Air Force standard. The future of Standard Inertial Navigation systems seems assured. It can be expected that the standards will continue to evolve to accommodate additional requirements and advances in technology so that system designers and users will not be restrained to automatic obsolescence.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1986) June 24 - 26, 1986 Seattle, Washington
Pages:	131 - 135
Cite this article:	Lewi, Jeremy, "The Standard Inertial Navigation Set - A Decade of Progress," Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1986), Seattle, Washington, June 1986, pp. 131-135.
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