Paratrooper Operations in GPS-Degraded Environments

Throughout history, airborne forces have given the United States military a significant tactical advantage with rapid deployment capability and little warning to opposing forces. Unfortunately, paratroopers often find themselves scattered across or even outside the intended drop zones. This forces the units to locate other squad members and equipment and regroup before they can proceed with their mission. This process must happen quickly in order for the airborne forces to maintain their tactical advantage of quick strike capability. Currently, airborne units rely upon GPS to navigate pre-defined waypoints to a pre-determined regrouping location(s). In today’s battlefield, however, the warfighter faces the ever-increasing risk of operating in GPS degraded or denied environments. Operating in these environments causes significant delay to paratrooper operations as they must spend additional time to perform localization and regrouping. To meet this critical need, IS4S is developing an integrated, multi-sensor navigation system for paratrooper operations in GPS degraded environments. The navigation system solution will be a low SWAP)solution utilizing existing sensors and platforms either in service or currently in active development. In Phase 1, IS4S demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed system. In Phase II, IS4S will fully develop, test, and demonstrate an advanced prototype system.