Integration and testing of a low-cost land navigator for the army combined arms weapon system (TACAWS)

The army combined arms weapon system (TACAWS) is currently being developed as a technology demonstration program at the US Army Missile Command (MICOM) located at Redstone Arsenal, AL. The thrust behind the development of TACAWS is to provide the 21st century Army a multi-purpose, multi-target, and multi-platform weapon system that can be easily deployed to any location in the world. The TACAWS land navigation system (LNS) incorporates data from 3 ring laser gyros, 3 quartz accelerometers, a precision lightweight GPS receiver (PLGR) and an odometer into the position and attitude solutions. The LNS is being installed on a modified M2 Bradley vehicle, for the purpose of navigation, targeting, data link attitude control, and missile initialization. Missile initialization includes the transfer of the LNS's north alignment accuracy to the missile's inertial measurement unit. The LNS test results reported include alignment accuracy (static and moving) and drift, inertial sensor error estimation, alignment transfer accuracy, and navigation accuracy with and without GPS data.