Raytheon and the US Air Force completed the first precision approach by a civil aircraft using a militarised GPS satellite navigation based landing system at Holloman AFB, New Mexico in late August. A Fedex Express Boeing 727-200 equipped with a Rockwell-Collins GNLU-930 Multi-Mode Receiver landed, using a Raytheon developed differential GPS military ground station. The ground station was developed for the Joint Precision Approach and Landing System (JPALS) programme, a joint USAF and US Navy project. The plan is to provide the US military with an all-weather Category II/III aircraft landing system, which is fully interoperable with civil GPS-based navigation and landing systems, including the Local Area Augmentation System.
Source: Flight International
