Ballistic Fire Control Computer (FCC) For Main Battle Tank (MBT)

Abstract

Fire Control Systems (FCSs) plays a critical role in the battle effectiveness of a Main Battle Tank (MBT) whether it is high first-round-hit-probability, ballistic solution computation for projectile trajectory, or moving target engagement. FCS comprises of Fire Control Computer (FCC), sensors, and gun controller. Fire control computer computes the elevation and azimuth (pitch and yaw axis) angles, based on the ballistic algorithm. A 32-Bit ARM processor based FCC for 125mm smoothbore gun MBT has been designed, developed and tested. The development is a migration from traditional 8-Bit or 16-Bit controllers to a 32-Bit ARM processor, making the solution more efficient and effective. The developed solution is cost-effective and easily configurable to wide variety of Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFVs). The ARM Cortex-M4 processor provides over 100 ballistic computational updates per second. FCC computes the ballistic solution for static and moving targets. The FCC was fitted on a MBT and was rigorously field tested by firing armoured piercing (AP) shells at a range of 2000 meters. The accuracy for the ballistic computations by the fire control computer was within allowed error range. This paper presents the complete development cycle of fire control computer, implementation of ballistic algorithm, and testing of developed system.