What is bore-sight accuracy and beam pointing stability?

Boresight accuracy known as pointing accuracy, it is a measure of the angular difference between the beam propagating axis (where the laser beam is pointing) and the mechanical axis (where the laser housing is pointing). Pointing stability is a measure of how much the beam alignment drifts over a period of time.

The direction of the output beam of a laser is subject to some beam pointing fluctuations, which can in some cases cause significant problems – e.g., when the beam must be coupled into a single-mode fiber, or when the beam must precisely hit a target at a large distance. For such reasons, a quantitative measure for the beam pointing stability can be of importance.

In a weapon boresighting system for aircraft and vehicles, an optical square is oriented to a fixed reference line on the vehicle and provides the directionality of a pair of orthogonally positioned of laser illuminated retroreflective catadioptric collimators attached to said optical square whose outputs are directed via one or more deviators or periscopes to a pair of retroreflective catadioptric receivers orthogonally attached to a second optical square positioned at the weapon to be boresighted, each said receiver imaging the laser on a position sensitive sensor, the outputs of the latter indicating the pitch roll and yaw condition at the weapon.