AAS 97-671
TRANSITIONING THE NATION'S SPACELIFT RANGE SYSTEM (SLRS) FROM RADARs TO GPS FOR PRIMARY RANGE SAFETY METRIC TRACKING
Capt. J. Ward - United States Air Force, SMC/CW, D. Villalpando - The Aerospace Corporation
Abstract
The United States Air Force is in the process of upgrading and modernizing the Eastern and Western Spacelift Ranges via the Range Standardization and Automation (RSA) Program. One of the major goals of the RSA program is to reduce life-cycle-costs while meeting the requirements of Range Safety and Range Users. To achieve this goal the Air Force has directed an investigation into the use of GPS as an alternative to C-Band RADARs for primary Range Safety metric tracking. The results presented in this paper clearly identify GPS as the optimum metric solution for the Spacelift Range System (SLRS), with the specifics of a transition plan still in work.