Development of an artillery accuracy model

Abstract

This thesis explains the methodologies that predict the trajectory and accuracy of an unguided, indirect-fire launched projectile in predicted fire. The trajectory is the path that a projectile travels to the impact point, while the accuracy is the measurement of the deviation of the impact point from the target. In addition, this thesis describes, the methodology for calculating the various factors such as drag and drift in the trajectory calculation. A three degree of freedom model will be compared to a five degree of freedom model. With an accurate trajectory prediction, it is possible to calculate the delivery accuracy in a predicted fire, which does not have cumulative error corrections associated with the registration or adjusted fire. The delivery accuracies that are considered in this thesis are; 1) Mean Point of Impact (MPI) that are related to aiming errors and 2) Precision errors that are related to the dispersion caused by ballistics effect. Finally, the trajectory and accuracy estimates are compared with NATO Armament Ballistics Kernel (NATO) and Joint Weapons Accuracy Model (JWAM) respectively, and the differences are of the order of 4 percent.