Advanced Cruise Missile Guidance System Description

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Advanced Cruise Missile Guidance System Description ADVANCED CRUISE MISSILE GUIDANCE SYSTEM DESCRIPTION Sue Hicks Advanced Cruise Missile SPO ASDIVCE Wright Patterson AFB, OH 45433-6503 ABSTRACT: ACM and is built by Hughes Aircraft Company - El Segundo. This paper will provide a functional description of the navigation and guidance The Advanced Cruise Missile system in the Advanced Cruise Missile (ACM) is the Air Force's newest stealth (ACM), one of the Air Force's newest missile. The ACM offers many stealth missiles. It will also discuss some improvements over the Air Launched of the areas of improvement over the Air Cruise Missile (ALCM). The ACM Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM). The provides longer standoff and total mission Kalman Filter design accommodates range, requires fewer position updates, and velocity updates, including lateral achieves a higher accuracy at the target velocities, and a nominal number of than the ALCM. The ACM's stealth position updates from Terrain Correlation characteristics improves its survivability as Matching (TERCOM) to achieve a high well. The ACM successfully achieved or accuracy, long range mission. exceeded its navigation requirements in the flight test program, which was completed in July 1990. INTRODUCTION: The Advanced Cruise Missile MISSION DESCRIPTION: System Program Office is located at Wright Patterson Air Force Base Dayton, OH. The ACM is carried extemally on The Prime Development Contractor is the B-52H, up to six per pylon. The ACM General Dynamics - Convair Division, San is launched from great standoff range, at Diego California. The Dual Production which time the wings and fins deploy and Contractor is McDonnell Douglas Missile the LDV is powered on. The vehicle Systems Company, Titusville Florida. The passes at subsonic speed through several Guidance Set (G/S) is a derivative of the F- timing control points along its 16's and B-1B's Navigation Units and was preprogrammed course. As specified in the designed and produced by Kearfott mission plan, the ACM performs terrain Guidance and Navigation Division - A following during designated portions of the Subsidiary of Astronautics Corporation of mission. The navigation system is updated America. The Laser Doppler Velocimeter with velocity information from the LDV (LDV) was designed specifically for the per the mission plan. In a typical mission, 355 U.S. Government work not protected by U.S. copyright. the ACM takes it position updates from Carrier Aircraft Equipment (CAE) four TERCOM maps - a landfall map, two programs the air vehicle to fly directly enroute maps and a terminal map. It from a launch point to a target without use navigates to the target where it detonates at of any waypoints or TERCOM updates. a preprogrammed Height Of Burst (HOB). The guidance set memory can A generic mission is shown in figure 1. accommodate up to 192 waypoints and 10 TERCOM map areas. GUIDANCE SET: The guidance set (G/S) consists of five functional components - the Inertial Reference Unit @U), Air Vehicle Digital Computer Unit (ADCU), Rate and Acceleration Sensor (RAS), and Power Supply Unit (PSU). The guidance set interfaces and communicates with the air vehicle avionics and the carrier aimaft. Figure 1 - ACM Mission Profile The navigation function is performed by the Inertial Reference Unit The carrier provides initialization, (IRU) and its supporting electronics which alignment, and mission profile data to the reside on the Platform Electronics cards (1 guidance set via the Umbilical Assembly and 2) and the Gyro Wheel Supply card. (UA) during captive carry. The data The inertial platform is a four gimbaled blocks from the carrier that the ACM uses system with two double axis gyros, the are the same as those used by the ALCM vertical gyro and the azimuth gyro, and and SRAM. Upon separation, the guidance three orthogonally mounted accelerometers. set processes steering and engine control commands to navigate along the mission The Air Vehicle Digital Computer route to the target. Unit (ADCU) is the main processor of all the navigation and fight control functions, The ACM is capable of performing or the “brains” of the system. The ADCU missions that are terrain aided, i.e. is embedded in the guidance set. Memory TERCOM updating is utilized, or free consists of 128K of RAM and 64K of inertial. The mission can be flex targeted Electrically Erasable Programmable Read or direct targeted. In a flex targeted Only Memory (EEPROM). The ADCU mission, the carrier aircraft redefines a new communicates with ACM subsystems target by specifying a new target location through direct memory access or MIL- that is on a straight line from any existing STD-175OA instructions. The types of waypoint. In a direct targeted mission, the Input/Output are discrete, analog to digital, digital to analog, and serial data bus. These functions are performed by the Computer Processing Unit (CPU) card, the Digital YO card, the Analog to Digital (ND) card, the Digital to Analog @/A) card, the Serial YO card, the Discrete YO card, and two memory cards. The ADCU's processing speed is 580K operations/sec. The ADCU uses EEPROM to act as a non-volatile memory for storing the OFS. At power on, the OFS is copied from EEPROM to RAM for execution. Mission data is stored in RAM only. w The Rate and Acceleration Sensor t i (RAS) is a module that provides air vehicle body rates and accelerations to the ADCU for flight control functions. The RAS Figure 2 - Top View of Open Guidance Set consists of three single axis strapdown gyros and two accelerometers, mounted to The Air Modulator in an air control sense normal and lateral accelerations. valve to provide the platform with constant Although roll, pitch, and yaw information cooling over the temperature/flow range of could have been derived from the platform cooling air from the Environmental Control data, the platform data rate was too slow to System (ECS). The air modulator consists adequately support flight control of a temperature sensor on the platform processing. The flight control commands case which provides a signal to electronic are output of the guidance set to the Aft comparators. A signal that differs from Avionics Unit (AAU). The AAU interprets the comparator set point will result in an the guidance set commands for the fin electronic output to the air valve's drive actuators. motor. The drive motor adjusts the valve position to allow the cooling air to return The Power Supply Unit (PSU) is a the case to an acceptable operating new design. It consists of the Input power temperature. Conditioner (IPC), the DC/DC card and the AC/DC card. AC and DC power was In the first step in the operational required to meet system warm-up sequence, the G/S is initialized in the requirements, thus the ACDC card was captive carry mode to stabilize the inertial Created. platform at operating temperature. Then the G/S powers the IRU and starts the The circuit cards mentioned above alignment process with aid fiom the Carrier and the other guidance set components are Aircraft Equipment (CAE). The CAE shown in Figure 2. provides alignment commands and data, 357 mission profile data, and free flight focused on the detector. The frequency of initialization data. Upon command from this light has been Doppler shifted in the CAE, the G/S performs air vehicle proportion to the air vehicle velocity. The Built In Test (BIT)on itself and other Doppler shifted beam mixes on the detector avionics components. BIT results are with a portion of the laser beam whose stored and reported to the carrier aircraft frequency has not been shifted. When upon request. these two beams mix, they produce a signal current at the Doppler frequency. The Upon separation from the carrier, Doppler signal at the detector output is the G/S processes and computes steering processed by the signal processing and engine control commands for the air electronics. The computed velocity is vehicle flight control system. In the free transmitted to the navigation unit for flight mode, the G/S provides the guidance velocity updating. and control functions required to guide the air vehicle along preprogrammed flight profiles between precise geographical coordinates. All ACM mission steering and flight control calculations are performed by the Operational Flight Software (OFS). VELOCIMETERHARDWARE DESCRIPTION The Laser Doppler Velocimeter provides the guidance set with accurate measurements of the air vehicle’s ground velocity. The velocity data is used to update the Kalman Filter and therefore reduce the navigation errors. The LDV is operated only during certain times of the mission. It is hard mounted to the bottom of the guidance set, as shown in figure 3. Figure 3 - LDV and GIs Mounting The LDV is comprised of a CO2 Laser, beam forming and pointing optics, a The actual measurements that are detector, and signal processing electronics. made are the line-of-sight (LOS) The Laser beam is expanded and component of the ground velocity vector in transmitted through a window in the air three noncoplanaf directions by detecting vehicle to the ground. Light scattered by the Doppler shift in the frequency of the the ground is collected by the telescope and CO2 laser beam, and provide the velocity 358 information to the G/S. Upon command The laser is stimulated by an RF from the guidance set, the LDV will move power supply. The laser is adjusted to the the beam to one of the three beam positions correct frequency and sent to the beam shown in figure 4. The LDV processes the forming optics, where the laser beam is velocity data to veritjr its validity of the polarized and shaped. The laser beam is measurement. expanded in the pointing assembly and transmitted to the ground through the laser TOP VIEW window.
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