NaviGadget

GPS-guided parachutes increase safety in resupply

May 3, 2006 gps navigation, misc news

For the past five years, the Marine Corps has been utilizing a different style of parachute than the traditional round system used to airdrop heavy packages. This new parachute system, the Sherpa, has the ability to guide itself to the drop zone from up to 25,000 feet in the air and 15 miles away, landing within 100 yards of the targeted point of impact while carrying up to 2,200 pounds of supplies.

“The Sherpa is one system of precision-guided airdrop systems,” said Staff Sgt. Christine Weber, an assistant air delivery project officer with Infantry Weapons Section, Raids and Reconnaissance, Marine Corps Systems Command. “There are many systems in the family of precision-guided systems that utilize the Global Positioning System to ‘fly’ to a target.”

Equipped with a 1,200-square-foot canopy, the Sherpa is programmed with the information of where it needs to go, as well as how long after it falls from the aircraft before it opens the parachute.

After it is programmed, the GPS-guided parachute attached to its cargo is loaded aboard an aircraft, repeatedly checked for safety issues, flown close to the drop zone and tossed from the plane to make the rest of the way on its own.

“The main canopy steering lines are connected to the control lines in the airborne guidance unit, which operates with two servo motors,” said Weber, a 30-year-old native of Charlotte, N.C. “The motors turn to ‘reel in’ the control lines, allowing for the parachute to turn. The turns are determined by the mission that is programmed into it and based on winds and the target point. The GPS allows for the system to know where it is in the sky and then determine how it needs to get to where it is going.”