Abstract: A method and apparatus for aiming artillery by incorporating the GPS NAVSTAR system directly into a mobile artillery unit such as a howitzer. A firts GPS ground station is incorporated into a howitzer. A second GPS ground station is located at a distance from the first station. A Receiver Processor Unit at the first GPS ground station receives the position of both first and second ground stations, as well as any other GPS ground stations that are in range, and determines an external reference direction and a reference angle for the second GPS station with respect to the reference direction. An azimuth transfer mechanism is aligned with the second GPS station at the reference angle so that the howitzer shares a common alignment with all guns in an artillery battery and the entire artillery battery may be aimed at a single target. Preferably the second GPS station also comprises a howitzer so that the artillery battery disperses in tactically preferred groups of two howitzers each.

Abstract: A wire packing method for packing wire segments in wiring bays of large-scale integrated circuit devices and integrated circuit devices produced employing such a method. Each wiring segment to be placed in a channel of a wiring bay is assigned a score in accordance with criteria developed for the particular application. The start point, end point and a segment identifier is recorded for each segment to be packed. For each channel, segments which can be considered candidates for packing in that channel are extracted from the list. For that channel, moving forwardly from one end of the channel, at the end point of each segment, a total score is calculated by adding to the score of that segment a best score occurring before the start point of the segment. If the total score exceeds a present value of a best string score for nonoverlapping segments, the present value of the best string score is replaced by the new total score, otherwise the present value of the best string score is retained.