James Isaac Meadows

US Patent:

H406, Jan 5, 1988

Filed:

Apr 6, 1987

Appl. No.:

7/034364

Inventors:

Ricky K. Hammon - Decatur AL
Monte K. Helton - Madison AL
Ray H. Farmer - Huntsville AL
James F. Meadows - Hartselle AL

Assignee:

The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Army - Washington DC

International Classification:

F41G 700

US Classification:

244 311

Abstract:

This device is a modification to the basic auto-tracker function in missile uidance systems, and consist of three new auto-tracker functions. First the gunner has control of an extra set of crosshairs in the tracker output imagery. The gunner will position this crosshair on the desired impact point of the target while the auto-tracker is tracking the target and issuing guidance commands to the missile. The second part is a discrete command issued by the gunner to the auto-tracker. If the gunner decides his impact point selection is better than the auto-trackers impact point selection he simply commands the auto-tracker to enter the aimpoint bias mode. At this time the auto-tracker will stop tracking the old track point and start tracking the part of the image defined by the gunner controlled crosshair. The third part is the filtered transition of the auto-tracker error signal from the old track point to the new track point. The results of optimum aimpoint selection will be a large improvement in missile kill probability against a wide variety of target and background conditions.