Weapon control system for airborne application

The integrated fire control system (IFCS) plays an important role in the present-day fighter aircraft and helicopters. Weapons, such as missiles (active/passive), rockets and guns may be present on the fighter aircraft or helicopter. IFCS monitors the status of the weapons present on the vehicle and passes the information to pilot/co-pilot. Depending upon the health/availability of the weapons, IFCS selects/fires the weapons. An attempt has been made to bring out the details of one such IFCS. As a stepping stone, smaller version is developed and same philosophy can be used for integrating more and more weapons. Here, emphasis has been made on design and development of weapon control unit which is the heart of IFCS, both in hardware and software. The system has been developed using a 486 DX2 processor, and an elaborate software has been developed in PL/M.