GIANT's Mission Planning Role

Greg Gerten and Brian Hulbert

Abstract:	The Global Positioning System (GPS) Interference and Navigation Tool (GIANT) is a mission-level one-versus-many constructive and repeatable simulation tool used to determine navigation (GPS/INS) system performance and operational effectiveness in an electronic combat environment. GIANT is a US Government-owned PC-based simulation tool that is maintained by Veridian Engineering under the sponsorship and endorsement of the Developmental Planning office, Los Angeles AFB, California. The current model manager is Capt. Jeff Del Vecchio (SMC/XREA). GIANT is also a member of the Air Force Standard Analysis Toolkit Suite of Models and is listed in the Modeling and Simulation Resource Repository. This paper will describe GIANT and its role as a mission-planning aid. GIANT’s graphical user interface (GUI) allows the mission planner to represent and visualize a virtual battlefield consisting of GPS jammer laydowns, target laydowns, flight profiles, and satellite constellation characteristics all synchronized to GPS time and displayed in layers over optional National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) Compressed ARC Digitized Raster Graphics (CADRG) digital maps. While building the scenario, the mission planner can use data from external data sources (such as actual test data) or utilize the data from any of the various GIANT databases (generic, named, or classified database). The GIANT UI can aid the mission planner in deciphering the data that is reported by the GIANT simulation. The playback and post-processing feature of the GIANT UI allows the mission planner to visualize the jammer and target locations, the route profiles which were flown, the GPS jamming environment over the area of interest, the satellites which were in-view and being tracked by each GPS-equipped platform, each satellite and platform’s GPS state, as well as positional and error information. This feature of GIANT greatly enhances the mission planner’s visualization of his virtual battlefield and allows him to focus on the more critical decisions, such as determining the best platforms and routes to use in avoiding threats and the effects from GPS jamming while flying into enemy territory. This mission-planning tool can assist in developing the order of battle and planning of synchronized attacks in a virtual battlefield laden with a variety of threats to GPS-equipped platforms.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 2002 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 28 - 30, 2002 The Catamaran Resort Hotel San Diego, CA
Pages:	170 - 175
Cite this article:	Gerten, Greg, Hulbert, Brian, "GIANT's Mission Planning Role," Proceedings of the 2002 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, San Diego, CA, January 2002, pp. 170-175.
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