Advanced Alignment Concepts for Precision-Guided Weapons

Kevin Shortelle and William Graham

Abstract:	The Department of Defense is pursuing several technology programs which specify requirements for advanced air-to-surface weapons. For instance, the JDAM and JSOW programs are investigating the accuracy improvements afforded by standard tactical weapons equipped with GPS-aided IMUs. To exploit the accuracy benefits of such weapons, the weapon IMU must be accurately initialized (i.e. aligned) prior to launch using data transferred from the aircraft INS. Conventional transfer alignment procedures require the aircraft to execute S-turn maneuvers lasting several minutes. Alternatively, advanced abgnment procedures can dramatically reduce this alignment time to just a few seconds, but these procedures do not have sufficient time to calibrate the IMU’s inertial sensors. However, since the weapon is expected to be aided by GPS for at least a portion of the flight, precise IMU sensor calibration may not be required. This paper investigates the timeline/calibration tradeoffs associated with advanced alignment procedures for aircraft employing GPS-aided, IMU-equipped weapons. Results indicate that if GPS aids the IMU over at least a portion of the weapon flight, a 5-set advanced transfer alignment procedure is expected to achieve weapon navigation accuracy comparable to that achieved by a conventional alignment procedure lasting several minutes.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 1995 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 18 - 20, 1995 Disneyland Hotel Anaheim, CA
Pages:	131 - 142
Cite this article:	Shortelle, Kevin, Graham, William, "Advanced Alignment Concepts for Precision-Guided Weapons," Proceedings of the 1995 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, Anaheim, CA, January 1995, pp. 131-142.
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