DARPA wants navigation chip to guide smart weapons

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants to reduce the military's reliance on Global Positioning System satellite guidance for advanced munitions, missiles and other weapons by creating a navigation-system-on-a-chip that combines traditional and atomic inertial guidance technology, reports Military and Aerospace Electronics.

The research agency released a broad agency announcement April 16 for the Chip-Scale Combinatorial Atomic Navigator program, which seeks the co-integration of inertial navigation sensors with different kinds of physics on one micro-scale inertial measurement unit, the story said.

In addition to smart weapons, other potential applications for these kinds of advanced navigational sensor chips include positioning, targeting, navigation, and guidance, the story said.