Use of Kalman Filter Residuals for Independent Fuze Safeing

"The Air Force has long been aware of the importance of safety devices for the warheads of their air-launched weapons. In fact, all modern air-launched weapons include safety and arming (S&A) subsystems which are designed to prevent the weapon fromunintentionally arming itself. The FZU-48 air turbine is a critical component of the S&A subsystems currently installed in the Air Force's Mark 80 series of glide bombs. Although the air-turbine has proven itself to be extremely reliable, it suffers fromseveral shortcomings. First, the turbine adds weight and drag to the weapon. Second, the size of the turbine may preclude its use on smaller guided weapons under development by the Air Force (e.g., the small diameter bomb, SDB). In an effort to redressthese shortcomings, the Air Force has expressed a desire to develop alternative S&A subsystems which do not include an air turbine. The objective of this proposed research, therefore, is to investigate the feasibility of replacing the air-turbine S&Asubsystem with a battery and a novel algorithm designed to exploit information provided by the weapon's GPS, IMU, and Kalman integration filter. The results of this research may lead to the adoption of lower-cost, less-intrusive S&A subsystems. Significant benefits will result from the successful completion of this research. If it can be demonstrated that the air turbine can be replaced with the proposed novel S&A subsystem without sacrificin