The Strategic Systems business area has been tasked by the Air Force Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) System Program Office (SPO) Guidance Division to provide GPS tracking hardware and test and evaluation support for a series of test launches of the Minuteman III ICBM. The ICBM SPO has been directed to replace radar-based missile tracking with GPS tracking in order to increase observability of accuracy errors in its new NS-50 life extension guidance system. This program is designated the Associated Operations program and, by the end of FY 2003, will have tested six missiles with GPS hardware provided by APL.

For each of these tests, SSD provides the ICBM SPO a GPS Full Signal Translator (FST), which flies onboard the missile, associated pre-flight checkout equipment, portable ground equipment (PGE) receivers to record the GPS signals during flight, and GPS track files (pseudo-range and phase) of the missile post-flight. The FST is a new generation of a family of GPS translators flown for over two decades on Navy Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM) test flights, and was tested for the first time on a Minuteman III test flight. The GPS track data are processed in the SSD GPS SATRACK (post-flight GPS SAtellite TRACKing) Facility. In this facility, data from each satellite in view during the flight test are edited, corrected, and merged to produce a best-estimate trajectory of the missile during flight for use in guidance accuracy evaluation.

The ICBM SPO Guidance Division is also tasking SSD to build and provide GPS FSTs for use in a real-time tracking function for range safety under a new program designated the GPS Metric Tracking Program (GMTP). Beginning in FY 2004, the Air Force will be testing Minuteman III missiles with GPS real-time tracking, and will be phasing out C-Band radar tracking.