Vital Advanced Inertial Network

Many aircraft sensors and weapons require accurate, local, time-varying inertial information relative to a principal reference, usually the main inertial navigation system. This data may be required during severe manoeuvres and despite other structural deflections due to aircraft aging, changing stores configurations, and fuel burnoff. Past solutions to this problem have included co-location, structural stiffening, or transfer alignment using high cost navigation grade inertial sensors. The Vital Advanced Inertial Network (VAIN) program sponsored by the Reference Systems Branch of the Wright Laboratory Avionics Directorate, is developing and testing an advanced inertial network to support precision targeting and weapon delivery under the influence of structural bending. This paper addresses some of the VAIN work and describes the sensor requirements for and performance of a transfer alignment based algorithm for compensating for aircraft flexure using low cost inertial sensors