TARSUS -A New Generation State of the Art Tactical Artillery Survey and Gun Laying System

Murat Eren, Ozgur Atesoglu and D.R. Levent Guner

Abstract:	In this paper, main aspects of the new generation tactical artillery survey and gun laying system development program are described. The aim of the program is to design a fast and accurate artillery survey system, which can effectively be used in the dynamic battlefield of 21st century. Indirect fire support units must be responsive and survivable which require precise positioning and orientation information obtained in a short time. Artillery systems must be able to move to unsurveyed positions in order to keep up with the dynamic battle. Current survey teams are too slow to provide required position and azimuth information on time. Existing INS based survey equipments suffer from ageing and are becoming unreliable. Gyro-theodolite systems are far from satisfying the dynamic operation doctrines. A new artillery survey system concept which drastically shortens the surveying time and keeps up with the dynamic operations is mandatory. TARSUS is the cost effective, high performance and compact solution to field artillery survey. It combines GPS/VMS aided fiber optic inertial navigation technology with high performance angle/distance measuring theodolite. It can lay guns, mortars, radars, sound ranging items, provides high accuracy surveyed points and orienting lines to other assets with high precision. The paper focuses on the design philosophy, which lets the system to provide continuous position and azimuth information without requiring any setup or leveling, within a minimum amount of measurement time. The effect of GPS/VMS aiding on the overall system performance is also presented. Surveying and gun laying performance is demonstrated in comparison with the readily existing systems. It is concluded that the proposed design concept, utilizing GPS/VMS aided INS combined with high performance angle/distance measurement device, exceeds the conventional 4th and 5th order military survey standards. Furthermore, it provides highly accurate, dynamic, continuous, easy surveying capability under any condition, including GPS jamming.
Published in:	Proceedings of IEEE/ION PLANS 2006 April 25 - 27, 2006 Loews Coronado Resort Hotel San Diego, CA
Pages:	256 - 265
Cite this article:	Eren, Murat, Atesoglu, Ozgur, Guner, D.R. Levent, "TARSUS -A New Generation State of the Art Tactical Artillery Survey and Gun Laying System," Proceedings of IEEE/ION PLANS 2006, San Diego, CA, April 2006, pp. 256-265. https://doi.org/10.1109/PLANS.2006.1650611
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