Ultra-high impact resistant digital data recorder for missile flight testing

A practical alternative to telemetry is being used during the flight testing of a new autonomous antitank munition for the capture of onboard test data. A unique crash-proof solid state flight data recorder (FDR) using nonvolatile flash EPROM memory was developed and extensively tested and has been successfully used on five full system flight tests to date. The FDR stores over 20 megabytes of flight data in the tactical missile's warhead volume and retains all data even after a highspeed impact with steel armor plating. Serial digital data from the missile's onboard processor and various onboard sensors is captured at a rate greater than 6 Mb/s.<
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