For military units on the network edge, GPS satellite guidance isn’t always readily available. With Honeywell’s Tactical Advanced Land Inertial Navigator (TALIN), however, vehicles and artillery can navigate such areas more precisely to increase troop safety and maximize mission success. Honeywell recently signed a licensing agreement with Tata Power’s Strategic Engineering Division (SED) to produce TALIN in India.
Incorporating ring laser gyroscopes (RLGs) and quartz accelerometers (QAs), TALIN is a high-accuracy, shock-stabilized position and pointing inertial navigation system for military and commercial platforms. The digital RLG, an inertial sensor, measures the difference of frequencies between counter-propagating laser beams to provide the rotation angle or rotation rate about the RLG’s sensitive axis. That data then helps determine the orientation of a system in inertial space.
The QAs feature an etched-quartz-flexure seismic system that uses an amorphous quartz proof-mass structure to provide bias, scale factor, and axis alignment stability. Its integrated electronics develop an acceleration-proportional output current that provides both static and dynamic acceleration measurement.
Initial efforts will focus on the TALIN 2000, with manufacturing/production of the system components expected by 2016. The TALIN 2000 is a single, “plug-and-play” system that spans across multiple platforms. It can provide alignment measurements while stationary or on the move, and has multiple accuracy configurations to meet different application requirements. Optional, external vehicle motion sensor (VMS), precision lightweight GPS receiver (PLGR), and defense advanced GPS receiver (DAGR) navigation sensors are available, too. All software is modular and field-upgradeable to save costs.
The agreement is expected to extend to the TALIN 3000, 4000, and 5000 products, which offer different capabilities for a wide range of operational requirements. Currently, more than 15,000 systems from the TALIN family are operating on over 60 military and commercial platforms worldwide. This partnership with Tata Power aims to increase locally manufactured technologies for India’s defense industry and give the Indian Armed Forces an easy-to-justify option for navigating the 21st-century battlefield.