Missile Guidance: "A Missile Named Mac" ~ 1962 Bell Laboratories (AT&T)

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Animated cartoon explaining missile guidance systems produced by John Sutherland for Bell Labs.

Originally a public domain film, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_guidance

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Missile guidance refers to a variety of methods of guiding a missile or a guided bomb to its intended target. The missile's target accuracy is a critical factor for its effectiveness. Guidance systems improve missile accuracy by improving its "Single Shot Kill Probability" (SSKP), which is part of combat survivability calculations associated with the salvo combat model.

These guidance technologies can generally be divided up into a number of categories, with the broadest categories being "active," "passive" and "preset" guidance. Missiles and guided bombs generally use similar types of guidance system, the difference between the two being that missiles are powered by an onboard engine, whereas guided bombs rely on the speed and height of the launch aircraft for propulsion...

History

The concept of missile guidance originated at least as early as World War I, with the idea of remotely guiding an airplane bomb onto a target.

In World War II, guided missiles were first developed, as part of the German V-weapons program Project Pigeon was American behaviorist B.F. Skinner's attempt to develop a pigeon-guided missile.

The first U.S. ballistic missile with a highly accurate inertial guidance system was the short-range Redstone.

Categories of guidance systems

Guidance systems are divided into different categories according to whether they are designed to attack fixed or moving targets. The weapons can be divided into two broad categories: Go-Onto-Target (GOT) and Go-Onto-Location-in-Space (GOLIS) guidance systems. A GOT missile can target either a moving or fixed target, whereas a GOLIS weapon is limited to a stationary or near-stationary target. The trajectory that a missile takes while attacking a moving target is dependent upon the movement of the target. Also, a moving target can be an immediate threat to the sender of the missile. The target needs to be eliminated in a timely fashion in order to preserve the integrity of the sender. In GOLIS systems, the problem is simpler because the target is not moving.

In every Go-Onto-Target system there are three subsystems:

- Target tracker

- Missile tracker

- Guidance computer

The way these three subsystems are distributed between the missile and the launcher result in two different categories:

Remote Control Guidance: The guidance computer is on the launcher. The target tracker is also placed on the launching platform.

Homing Guidance: The guidance computers are in the missile and in the target tracker...

Homing guidance

Proportional navigation

Proportional navigation (also known as PN or Pro-Nav) is a guidance law (analogous to proportional control) used in some form or another by most homing air target missiles. It is based on the fact that two objects are on a collision course when the direction of their direct Line-of-Sight does not change. PN dictates that the missile velocity vector should rotate at a rate proportional to the rotation rate of the line of sight (Line-Of-Sight rate or LOS-rate) and in the same direction.

Radar homing

Active homing

Active homing uses a radar system on the missile to provide a guidance signal. Typically, electronics in the missile keep the radar pointed directly at the target, and the missile then looks at this "angle" of its own centerline to guide itself. Radar resolution is based on the size of the antenna, so in a smaller missile these systems are useful for attacking only large targets, ships or large bombers for instance. Active radar systems remain in widespread use in anti-shipping missiles, and in "fire-and-forget" air-to-air missile systems such as AIM-120 AMRAAM and R-77...