TARGET ACQUISITION MODELING OF FORWARD-MOTION CONSIDERATIONS FOR AIRBORNE RECONNAISSANCE OVER HOSTILE TERRITORY

One of the most apparent aspects of motion in real-time airborne systems is acceleration. In this paper, effects of acceleration are considered for two important concerns: image quality and target acquisition. A comparison between the effects of uniform velocity and accelerated motion is presented. There are two opposing considerations when flying over hostile territory: The pilot must fly as fast as possible so as not to be detected or attacked by the enemy, but sufficiently slow so that the degradation of the image quality will not be too severe. Mathematical tools developed recently permit a quantitative analysis of the effects of acceleration on the image quality and acquisition of the target.