[ navigation ] The Company has an extensive customer base: Aircraft equipment is supplied under a contract for upgrading India’s An-32 airplanes; the onboard satellite navigation system SN-3307 is included in Soviet-vintage Su and MiG-series aircraft upgrade packages being implemented in countries of the former Soviet Union as well as countries in Asia and Africa; vehicle-mounted satellite navigation systems are being supplied for equipping the BTR-4E APCs contracted by Iraq; GLONASS/GPS-aided position location sensors are part of a navigation equipment suite mounted on the Oplot MBTs being built for the export to Thailand. Vice-Chief Designer at Orizon-Navigation, A. Vodianykh, speaking at international conference “Future directions in land armaments development” on September 26, 2013, said that his Company is currently working on projects in several promising areas. These include the development of an R-Theta navigation system designed for spatial orientation angle measurement of moving and stationary objects. At this point, a prototype of the system has been constructed and pretested. During the tests, the system’s three-antenna interferometer with a 1.5m baseline showed accuracy of orientation angle measurement of 8 minutes for heading, and 16 minutes for each of roll and pitch. Work is also underway for development of a multifunctional command/control/ISR system with a set of capabilities as follows: determining position location coordinates of ground
36 / Ukrainian DEFENSE REVIEW / OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2013
targets and large-caliber ammunition impact points; measuring target distances; navigation by cardinal directions; determining target direction; conducting visual reconnaissance; provision of situational awareness and target selection support; vertical and horizontal angle measurements; photo/video image registration; recording of audio commentaries; wireless data feeding to command centers. Under a project commissioned by Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Airborne Troops, a navigation information system for special operations support is being developed with capabilities as follows: routing planning; provision of navigation support during paradrop operations; provision of navigation information support in areas of landing; en-route navigation etc. This system is planned to be developed by way of upgrading the SN-3210 “Bazalt-K” navigation equipment suite to a configuration with performance capabilities conforming to
C2 (control and command) system requirements. According to A. Vodianykh, the Company proposes that autonomous operational capability of positioning and navigation support systems be improved by means of further developing systems which will use a combination of sensors based on different physical and integration principles in order to produce a system supporting navigation and positioning functionalities. One more area of focus which Orizon-Navigation regards to be highly promising is the development of a navigation local area network (NavLAN) to be deployed on Earth surface or in near-Earth space rather than in outer space, considering that few countries can afford building and maintaining a global positioning system of their own. Vodyanykh believes that this could be achieved by building a standalone system with a highly accurate position location capability. Such system could rely on a constellation of so called “pseudo satellites” (PS) associated with conventional means of surveying, which will be networked and provide navigation support for ground and airborne vehicles. This option could be implemented in locations where conventional GNSS assets are difficult to use due to jamming interferences, in enclosed spaces or high-latitude areas. High power output of such transmitting devices makes them extremely resistant to hostile jamming. A system of that kind would provide a high accuracy of position location (with an error budget not exceeding 10 cm). Finally, and most importantly, a system implemented based on multiple “pseudo satellites” becomes an economically unfeasible target for enemy attacks.