Effect of carefree handling requirements on an air-launched seeker-guided weapon

This paper considers the effect of two operational constraints on the size of the release envelope for an air- launched seeker-guided weapon: a requirement for a specified terminal accuracy (as determined by the Circular Error Probable (CEP)) and the requirement for carefree handling (i.e., an insensitivity to release conditions within a specified range of delivery parameters). The system considered in the paper is an air-launched, unpowered weapon with an autonomous guidance capability, provided by an infrared seeker and an inertial navigation system. The weapon is modeled using a six degree-of-freedom ballistic simulation with a simulated infrared seeker and a set of simple target detection algorithms. The paper compares the effect of carefree handling requirements on the size of the weapon's release envelope for two standard delivery profiles (low-level toss delivery and medium-level delivery) and for different requirements on the terminal accuracy.