Impact of structural flexure on precision tracking

Ship flexure is currently an uncompensated phenomenon that is accounted for in system error budgets without apparent compromise of system performance. However, upcoming system performance requirements may not be able to absor b ship flexure errors. Analyses have been performed throughout the AEGIS de velopment program to determine the magnitude of ship flexure which predicte d several milliradians of flexure between arrays under temperature loading, but analysis should be validated by test and measurement. Flexure has been measured in other ship classes; however none of these results can be direc tly applied to AEGIS. We have identified ways of conducting a test to effectively measure the mag nitude of ship flexure using current technology A secondary goal of measure ments would be to allow us to evaluate these new technology systems for pos sible use in measuring static and dynamic flexure for compensation during t actical combat system operation.