The Helicopter Forward Looking InfraRed (HFLIR) system is a lightweight, multipurpose, thermal imaging sensor for pilotage/navigation, surveillance, search-and-rescue, automatic tracking and targeting. It is a four-axis gimbal assembly, gyrostabilized in both azimuth and elevation. Design conditions for the gimbal assembly include operation and non-operational inertial, thermal, and dynamic loads. Design goals centered on augmenting stiffness and reduce weight to achieve relatively high modal performance, and also a study was performed to select key components in the gimbal hardware that are essential to meeting the performance objectives. A finite element model was used to maximize the fundamental frequency and select the best configuration the inner gimbal assembly of the turret FLIR unit (TFU). As a result, the fundamental frequency of the gimbal assembly met the design and performance requirements and was selected to meeting the performance objectives include torque motors, bearings, seals and position sensors.