I'm not sure how much this will help you but I hope it gives some pointers. Here is a Mathematica function which computes the probability under the distributions for a circle of radius separation/2 for two ships with a normal distribution of position with variance 0.2. A variance of 0.2 is close to the 95% certainly level. In brief it defines a mixture distribution in 2 dimensions with covariance matrix {{0.2,0},{0,0.2}} (* other covariance matrices would account for elliptical distributions *). Forms the probability distribution function for that mixture and then integrates it over the required range. (* Uses absolute separation distance rotated to the x axis *) probProximity[reportedSeparationMiles_, probabiityRangeMiles_] := With[{dist = MixtureDistribution[{1, 1}, {MultinormalDistribution[{-(reportedSeparationMiles/2),0}, {{0.2, 0}, {0,0.2}}], MultinormalDistribution[{ reportedSeparationMiles/2, 0}, {{0.2, 0}, {0,0.2}}]}]}, NIntegrate[ PDF[dist][{x, y}] Boole[Abs[\[Sqrt]((0 - x)^2 + (0 - y)^2)] <= probabiityRangeMiles/2], {x, -(probabiityRangeMiles/2), probabiityRangeMiles/2}, {y, -(probabiityRangeMiles/2), probabiityRangeMiles/2}]] The probability distribution of position for two ships 5 miles apart with a 95% confidence of being within one mile of reported position. ![Separation Distribution][1] For a range of 5 miles, the calculated value is probProximity[5, 5] >0.464173 Here is the probability of proximity over a range of distances: ![Probability of separation][2] [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/J8H1J.png [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/IPaFX.png