ION Technical Content
Rangeless Ranges
| Abstract: | The criticality of almost real-life aerial combat is obvious. Air combat training provides a realistic simulation of those typical missions in an environment where a mistake becomes a learning experience not--a casualty. Thus, air combat training contributes to the effectiveness and survivability of U.S. combat forces by providing individual aircrew skill and large scale exercise training. Before GPS became available, realistic air combat training could only be conducted at instrumented ranges. Such ranges are very expensive to establish and maintain. But more importantly, they posed significant constraint on flight range and consequently on maneuverability and scope of exercises, because the aircraft had to be within view of the range ground equipment. GPS enabled air combat training to break out of these constraints and establish new paradigms in reality and accuracy of engagement assessment. In this paper, we briefly discuss the evolution of air combat training, the constraints by which it was bound, and their training implications. We then describe the transition from terrestrial instrumented ranges to global positioning system (GPS)-based rangeless ranges. Finally, we list the advantages of the GPS-based Tactical Combat Training System in terms of the modus operandi and the savings that can be realized in time and money. |
| Published in: |
Proceedings of the 54th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1998) June 1 - 3, 1998 The Adams Mark Hotel Denver, CO |
| Pages: | 517 - 525 |
| Cite this article: | Higdon, Thomas, Pinker, Aron, "Rangeless Ranges," Proceedings of the 54th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1998), Denver, CO, June 1998, pp. 517-525. |
| Full Paper: |
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