An Agile Lightweight Open Architecture Framework for Integrated Fire Control Systems

Many currently fielded weapon systems include fire control systems. Often, these fire control systems were developed as closed systems with proprietary interfaces and message formats. As a consequence, the integration of new sensors or other data sources is very costly. As fire control systems become ubiquitous, it is important to ensure that new software architectures are developed which are open and do not impose the same penalties for the integration of new data sources as legacy fire control systems. At the same time, as new sensors and data sources become available to the generation of fire control systems, there is an opportunity to make significant improvements to existing target location solutions. Target location plays an important role in todays battlefield because it allows for deployment of non-designated precision guided munitions. However, accurate target location from a single sensor location has been challenging due to the insufficient accuracy in azimuth determination. The notion of enhancing location accuracy by leveraging distributed sensors is appealing as a cost effective and simple solution. To meet these needs, Intelligent Automation Inc. proposes the development of an open architecture library capable of target detection and tracking using data from distributed sensor sources.