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New tracking technology tested at Fort Bragg

Nov 12, 2009

By Staff Sgt. Jacob A. McDonald

FORT BRAGG, N.C. - Soldiers with 3rd Battalion, 27th Field Artillery (HIMARS) drove their high mobility artillery rocket system out of an Air Force C-17 Globemaster III on Pope Air Force Base, Oct. 22, with a new advancement that will get them into the fight faster.

The hot panel program allows the HIMARS to link to an aircraft's global-positioning system and track itself in the air, anywhere in the world. This advancement will allow Soldiers to switch between a land mode and an air mode so the vehicle-tracking system can find its location and its targets rapidly when it exits an airplane.

"It allows you to start up the launcher in flight and roll off the airplane ready to shoot," said Steve Coventry, system and test engineer with Lockheed Martin.

Engineers from Lockheed Martin and Redstone Arsenal, who are working on the project, came to Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base to gather data through flight tests using the HIMARS vehicles and a C-17.

Scott Kalfus, a missiles and fire control system test engineer with Lockheed Martin, said all the vibrations from the flight will be recorded on specialized equipment and used to develop the right programming for the HIMARS.

The engineers working on the project also implemented a program that will sense movement and switch the navigational unit between air mode and land mode.

The flights were used to verify the data from previous flights and to confirm that the changes already implemented were working correctly.

"We had to make changes in the position navigation unit," Coventry said. "It is designed for ground vehicles. We had to make several changes to the (software) to handle the greatly increased speeds of a C-17 and make allowances for avoidance maneuvers. It is very stressful on the navigation unit to maintain accuracy during flight.

"We did flight tests before and collected data," he continued. "We made changes to the (software). Now we are going to test those changes. The fire control system had to tell the navigation unit to go into air mode. The computer had to tell it there are no odometer inputs. It has to go strictly off the inertial movement unit and the GPS."

The ease of use for the operators is one of the primary objectives of the system. Coventry said they hope to make the system simple for Soldiers to use that will allow them to join the fight faster.

"We want this to be as user friendly as possible, so we want to make it as automatic as we can," he said. "We have to provide a link between the GPS in the aircraft and the launcher. Right now it is a physical connection. In the future it will be a wireless connection. GPS will broadcast inside the aircraft."

According to James Cyr, with the precision fires project office at Redstone Arsenal, Hunstville, Ala., the data collected from this round of test flights will be computed and used to develop the final version of the software due out in 2011.