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The new LN-120G stellar navigation system developed by Northrop Grumman in Woodland Hills, Calif., has successfully completed its first flight test on RC-135 aircraft. The LN-120G is a GPS-augmented stellar inertial navigation system that tracks stars day and night. It uses the information about a star's location to refine the positioning information provided by the aircraft's inertial navigation systems. Repeating this process enables the LN-120G to provide heading information accurate to 20 arc seconds. Aided by the high positional accuracy of the Northrop Grumman LN-120G, hostile targets detected by the RC-135 can be accurately pinpointed and transmitted to Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) aircraft and, ultimately, to fighter aircraft. "The LN-120G can also be adapted to address the needs of other aircraft requiring extremely precise navigation for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and other applications," says Mike Borck, Northrop Grumman's Stellar-Inertial Navigation program manager at the Navigation Systems Division.