Image guided weapon system and method

摘要

An image guided weapon system employing passive optical terminal guidance and method which provides the precision strike capability without requiring the use of a designator or the presence of an additional designator aircraft, which can operate through the weather, which allows rapid attack of multiple targets, and which does not require any aircraft to remain in the target area after a weapon has been launch. A target area is designated and an image of the target area is generated. An aimpoint within the target area is selected and GPS coordinates of the aimpoint are determined. An image template is generated using flight orientation data, the image of the target area, and GPS coordinates of aimpoint. Image processing software creates an image template which is downloaded to a weapon. The weapon's seeker generates seeker images which are compared to the image template. Once a satisfactory correlation between the image template and the seeker image is made, the aimpoint coordinates are updated and the weapon is guided to the target.