A method to determine a precise location for alignment of an inertial navigation system (INS) is provided. The method includes aiming an imaging and ranging system mounted on a gimbal on a vehicle at a machine-readable image at a known location, determining an azimuth, an elevation angle, and a slant range to the machine-readable image, capturing the machine-readable image, decoding the known location from the machine-readable image, deriving the precise location of the vehicle from the known location, the azimuth, the elevation angle and the slant range, and aligning the INS based on the precise location.