LANTIRN

U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class Felix Garza Jr. (030325-N-4142G-009)

The LANTIRN or Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared for Night began life as combined targeting and navigation pods designed for the F-15E and F-16. When the US Navy became interested in using the F-14 Tomcat in the A/G role Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin) began its own program to show that the LANTIRN could quickly be adapted for F-14 use.

As the pod was adapted for the F-14 the secondary navigational pod was deleted, keeping only the targeting pod. The pod was wired up to its own control panel as the F-14 didn’t have the required 1553-bus for complete integration. The control panel was patched into the TCS to TID video feed allowing it to select either the TCS or the LANTIRN for display on the TID and VDI.

While the pod can read waypoints and selected weapon from the WCS, the pod has its own GPS receiver and is otherwise self-contained and controlled only via its own control panel. Additionally, it also has its own weapons release guidance removing the need to boresight the pod to the aircraft, a time-consuming task.

The FLIR sensor itself has three different zoom levels or fields of view (FoV). The Wide FoV limits are 5.9° and allows a maximum slew rate of 8.5°/s. The Narrow FoV limits are 1.7° and allows a maximum slew rate of 1.8°/s. The last mode, the Expanded FoV is a digital zoom of the Narrow FoV, meaning that the resolution will be worse in this mode. The FoV limits for the Expanded FoV are 0.8° with a max slew rate of 0.7°/s.

Controls and Displays

All the controls for the LANTIRN are situated on its own control panel mounted on the RIO’s left side console when the pod is present, including the switch controlling what video feed the TID and VDI display in the TV mode.

LANTIRN Video Elements

The FLIR (Forward Looking InfraRed) video-feed from the LANTIRN has superimposed data readout for the crew’s use. This video-feed can be viewed both on the TID (in TV-mode) and on the VDI (also in TV-mode) when the FLIR feed is selected on the control panel.

Amongst other things the displays show own aircraft position, target position as well as targeting cues to the crew. When using the LANTIRN for A/G attack these readouts are also used as targeting and release cues.

Own aircraft data is shown in the upper left corner (1), showing position, altitude, groundspeed and pitch angle (dive).

On the left side (2) the pod displays whether it’s using white hot or black hot (WHOT and BHOT) as well as if the AGC (Automatic Gain Control) or MGC (Manual Gain Control) is in use.

The lower left data-block (3) shows pod information, SR is slant range (line of sight range), AZ and EL is pod line of sight azimuth and elevation relative aircraft ADL (with AZ having L or R for left or right of aircraft heading). Below that is current UTC time and then IBIT codes below that.

💡 IBIT codes are not implemented currently and the clock will show local time.

The lower middle (4) shows current pod mode (A/A or A/G) and track mode (AREA, POINT or Q designations) on the left side. The right side shows currently selected weapon and laser code while above and in the center an L is shown when the laser is armed and flashing when firing the laser.

The lower right (5) shows data for currently selected Q (slew-point) except for QSNO, QADL and QHUD, TTG being time to go until on top of currently selected Q, the rows below that, bearing and range to Q, ELEV indicating elevation in feet of Q and lastly, below that, Q location.

6 is the crosshairs showing tracked position, in this case we have a bounding box, indicating currently tracked target in point mode. The two widest zoom modes will have boxes showing the field of view for the next, narrower, mode. Additionally there’s a small white square (FLIR pointing cue) moving around showing the current pod line of sight relative to aircraft from a top down perspective. In this case it’s right next to the upside down ^, top center, indicating that the pod is looking ahead of the aircraft. If the square is centered the pod is looking straight down and below center it indicates the pod looking aft.

Finally, 7 is the steering guidance towards the selected Q, the top one being commanded heading and the vertical one on the right the bomb release cue.

The commanded heading shows current aircraft heading above the inverted ^, with the commanded heading being displayed as a relative bearing either L (Left) or R (Right) of current aircraft heading below the line. The commanded heading is also indicated by a vertical line bisecting the horizontal one.

The right, bomb release cue, is only shown if the selected Q is QDES and shows a vertical line along which a release cue travels downwards. This release cue is only visible with a valid weapon selection (bomb) and when it reaches the two tick marks, that’s the cue to release. Below the line is the indicated TREL (Time to Release) in seconds, changing to TIMP (Time to Impact) after release.

Around this all is the masking curve, indicating at what angles the pod will be masked by own aircraft (looking into the aircraft hull). This is relative to the FLIR pointing cue, when the cue moves outside the masking curve the sensor will be blocked by the hull.

Control Panel

The control panel contains all the controls for the pod, including the control stick.

The power switch for the LANTIRN pod is located top left (1) with OFF disabling power to the system, IMU (blocked in above image) powering only the LANTIRN IMU and POD powering the whole system.

💡 IMU selection has no current DCS function.

The MODE switch (2) switches the POD sensor between STBY (Standby) and OPER (Operational).

The LASER ARMED (3) light illuminates when the laser is armed while the LASER switch (4) arms it. (ARM and SAFE positions available.)

Down right is the VIDEO switch (5) which controls what video is fed to the TID and VDI, FLIR selecting LANTIRN FLIR video and TCS selecting TCS video.

The four grouped indicator lights (6) indicate various error states in the LANTIRN system and the IBIT button (7) initiates the IBIT (Initialized Built-In-Test).

💡 The IBIT and fault indicators are not currently implemented in DCS.

Control Stick

The control stick for the LANTIRN operates the LANTIRN’s sensor itself, note though that the stick itself does not move, the buttons and hats on the stick are used to control the pod.

The left four-way hat, S3, (1) allows selection of QWp- and QWp+ (left/right) in addition to Point Track (up) and Area Track (down) modes.

The center slew hat (2) is used to slew the sensor line of sight itself and depression of this hat switches between white hot (WHOT) and black hot (BHOT) sensor modes.

The right four-way hat, S4, (3) allows for selection of QADL/QHUD (up), QDES (right) and QSNO (down) in addition to declutter level which is cycled by momentary depression of the hat. The left slider additionally changes the right hat function as detailed further down.

The red button on top (4) is used to cycle between the three fields of view (zoom levels) of the IR sensor.

The two-way hat on the side (5) selects either the A/G or A/A modes of operation for the pod.

Located on the left side of the stick head is a two way slider (6), spring-loaded to return to center. This switch changes the function of the right four-way hat.

Sliding it forwards allows for selection of manual gain while releasing and sliding it forwards again re-selects automatic gain. Change of the manual gain with manual gain already selected can be done by sliding the switch forwards and holding it for 2 seconds. With this mode active up/down on the right hat increases and decreases the gain while left/right decreases and increases level.

Sliding the switch aft momentarily allows selection of used laser code, while sliding it aft and holding allows for focus control. When set to laser code change, the right four-way hat selects digit to change with left/right and increases and decreases the selected digit with up/down. In focus control up/down increases and decreases focus.

Located on the front of the stick (7) is a two-stage trigger, first detent manually lasing while the second detent fires the laser and designates QDES at current sensor position.

Lastly on the front side of the stick (8) is the latched laser fire button. Selecting it fires the laser for 60 seconds which can be overridden by the pressing and releasing the first trigger detent. A renewed press on the laser latch button resets the latched laser fire timer to 60 seconds, beginning a new 60 second countdown.

Startup

To start the LANTIRN from cold, set the power switch to POD. This will start the LANTIRN power-up sequence which takes 8 minutes. When ready, this will be indicated by the MODE switch showing STBY.

When at STBY, depression of the MODE button switches the system to OPER (Operational), enabling the LANTIRN sensor after a 30-second initialization.

Lastly, to allow display of LANTIRN FLIR video, select FLIR on the VIDEO switch.