Guidance and Navigation in the Global Engagement Department

The Global Engagement Department's (GED's) mission to enhance the security of the United States often involves delivering an effect to a target accurately and predictably across a long distance. Accurate navigation and guidance are critical to this challenge. This article provides a brief tutorial on navigation, guidance, and the related concept, control. GED has made many contributions to our sponsors' navigation and guidance challenges, including accurately initializing weapon navigation systems, optimally combining multiple navigation systems to improve accuracy and to identify error contributors, updating navigation systems with predictable external references, and solving complex guidance problems. Examples in this article illustrate the breadth and depth of these contributions.