Effect of Shipboard Inertial Navigation System Position and Azimuth Errors on Sea-Launched Missile Radial Miss

Abstract

The effect of position and azimuth errors in a shipborne inertial navigation system on the radial miss of a sea-launched ballistic missile which uses the shipborne system as a reference is discussed. The shipborne system is assumed to be reset and biased, using external position fixes. As a result of this resetting procedure, the latitude, longitude and azimuth errors are found to be statistically highly correlated. This correlation affects the resulting radial miss to a great extent for certain firing angles. It is also illustrated that improved techniques for resetting the shipborne system yield much reduced radial miss. Normalized numerical results are presented.