Case Study: U.S. Air Force achieves 3× faster real-time missile HIL testing with MathWorks Simulink Real‑Time

Guided Weapons Evaluation Facility Replaces Missile Testing System

The U.S. Air Force’s Guided Weapons Evaluation Facility (GWEF) needed to modernize real‑time hardware‑in‑the‑loop (HIL) missile testing—replacing legacy Fortran systems to achieve higher‑fidelity models, maintain required frame rates on off‑the‑shelf PC hardware, reduce development and driver‑writing time, and create a portable test setup. After an industry survey and side‑by‑side comparison, GWEF chose MathWorks tools, including Simulink, Simulink Real‑Time, Simulink Coder, MATLAB, and related toolboxes.

MathWorks helped GWEF recreate missile and seeker models in Simulink/Stateflow, automatically generate C code with Simulink Coder, run HIL simulations on PC hardware with Simulink Real‑Time, visualize tests with Simulink 3D Animation, and analyze results in MATLAB. With MathWorks solutions, the simulation main loop ran three times faster than the legacy system, development time dropped by about two months, team collaboration improved, and GWEF gained a portable, maintainable testing architecture ready for operational testing.

U.S. Airforce

Kenneth Anthony

Guided Weapons Evaluation Facility, Technical Director