Solo Aviation - LANTIRN/Litening

LANTIRN / LITENING
Low Altitude Navigation/Targeting Infra Red Pods

Acording to Lockheed Martin and the IAF magazine, more them 60 LANTIRN pods were ordered by the Israeli AF.
Recent published photos, show Israeli F-16s with Litening pods, and "Pave way II" guided bombs.

Litening

Advanced Airborne Targeting and Navigation Pod

Requirement:

One of the primary lessons learned from the Gulf War was that modern air forces need the ability to operate 24 hours a day in adverse weather conditions and to deliver precision guided weapons.

In Desert Storm, aircraft using precision weapons destroyed with just two bombs targets which required 9,000 bombs in World War II, and 300 bombs in Vietnam.

Answer:

The pods used in Desert Storm were expensive, single purpose systems which required multiple pods to perform various missions.
Until LITENING, no system incorporated in a single pod all the features required by a modern air force. LITENING, however, combines multiple sensors for maximum flexibility in a single pod at low cost.

Main Features:

LITENING is an advanced airborne infrared targeting and navigation pod. Designed to improve both day and night attack capabilities.
LITENING presents pilots with real-time, FLIR and CCD imagery. It is fully operational 24 hours a day and in adverse weather conditions.

LITENING's design enables the fighter air crew to carry out the following missions/tasks:

Detection/Recongnition/Identification/Laser Designation of surface targets
Accurate delivery of Laser Guided Bombs, cluster and general purpose bombs
Performance of low level night flights
Laser spot detection
Identification of aerial targets from BVR ranges

In order to accomplish all these tasks, LITENING employs 5 main sensors located on a single optical bench in the forward section of
LITENING:

[litening components]

FLIR
LITENING uses a high performance FLIR with 3 Fields of View. The wide FOV is displayed on the head-up for navigation while Medium and Narrow FOVs are used for target selection and are displayed on a heads-down display.

CCD camera
The CCD camera significantly improves daytime performance when compared to the FLIR selection.

Laser designator / range-finder
LITENING uses a 100 mJ laser to designate targets selected by the air crews and provides guidance to the Laser Guided Bomb.

Laser spot designator
The laser spot detector detects the laser energy from a secondary source, enabling ground or airborne Forward Air Controllers to designate the targets for the fighter aircraft. This feature is not present in any of the competitor pods.

Strap-down system
The SDS aligns LITENING to the aircraft line-of-sight electronically, improves target tracking and stabilizes the seeker.

All these sensors incorporated in a single pod provide the fighter aircrew with the flexibility to perform multiple missions and make LITENING the most cost effective solution available.

To Rafael's main page

LANTIRN

Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infra Red for Night

Mission:

The LANTIRN is a system for use on the Air Force's premier fighter aircraft - the F-15E and F-16C/D.

LANTIRN significantly increases the effectiveness of these aircraft, allowing them to fly at low altitudes, at night and under-the-weather to attack ground targets with a variety of precision-guided and unguided weapons.

LANTIRN consists of a navigation pod and a targeting pod integrated and mounted externally beneath the aircraft.

The navigation pod provides high-speed penetration on low visibility conditions and contains a terrain-following radar and fixed infrared sensor, which provides a visual cue, enabling the pilot to maintain a preselected altitude above the terrain and avoid obstacles.

The infrared sensor displays an image of the terrain in front of the aircraft, on the HUD.

The targeting pod contains:

High-resolution, FLIR sensor
(Displays an infrared image to the pilot)
Laser designator-rangefinder for precise delivery of laser-guided munitions
Missile boresight correlator for automatic lock-on of AGM-65D Maverick missiles
Software for automatic target tracking.

These features simplify the functions of target detection, recognition and attack and permit pilots of single-seat fighters to attack targets with precision-guided weapons on a single pass.

To Lockheed martin's LANTIRN page