R & D

The Research and Development (R & D) portion of CannonArtillery.com is intended to showcase some of the new and emerging technologies that are designed to improve cannon artillery capabilities and have been recognized as having potential use by the U.S. military.

Current Spotlight: FireFinder Position Analysis System (FFPAS)

The Firefinder Positioning Analysis System (FFPAS) is a planning tool used to analyze the positioning of radars and their coverage as well as confirm or deny the likeliness of acquiring enemy indirect fire attacks based on the positioning and orientation radars. The U.S. Army has used FFPAS since early 1996 and Fires reported recently that the initial FFPAS units have been upgraded to account for added capabilities.

The upgrades include adding a capability for AN/TPQ-36(v)7 and AN/TPQ-36(v)8 radars, a suite of new tools and adjusting the software so it can run on laptop computers.

As a software tool, the FFPAS predicts the site-specific weapon location performance for Firefinder radars. It is compatible with a large variety of weapon placements and characteristics.

While FFPAS is already a valuable and versatile tool to the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, the latest improvements are meant to enhance its utility for today's Warfighters.

Read more.