MS Instruments’ Air-to-Ground Strafe and Bomb-Scoring systems have been designed for rapidly training and assessing the performance of a pilot in air-to ground gunnery and bombing and have been in service with the Royal Air Force for over 15 years.
The Strafe system is completely automatic, allowing multiple pilots to be in the air at once while the Windows®-based software can record details of the pilot, aircraft call sign, aircraft type, stores and attack profile for analysis / de-brief upon landing. The system produces instantaneous results back to the control tower for relay to the pilots or for later analysis. The targets are acoustic meaning that only supersonic projectiles will be recorded, reducing errors from rubble or stones.
The Bomb-Scoring system consists of two sighting quadrants used to triangulate a bomb falling on or near a target. This system is semi-automatic and requires the operator to log the angular measurement which is sent via UHF radio link to the range control tower. The software displays the bomb position on screen in graphical form ready for relaying to the pilot or for later analysis.
Both systems are designed to be accurate and to provide real-to-life environments for training pilots. By training outside, the pilots are also subject to environmental factors that they would not be aware of when training using a simulator such as wind and eyestrain due to sun.