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GUIDANCE
VOL. 7, NO. 6
NOV.DEC. 1984
Introduction
INCE World War II, guided missiles have played an
increasingly important role in warfare. Earlier papers in
this series1'2 reviewed the development of the inertial guidance
systems that made possible the accurate delivery of long-range
ballistic (and other) missiles for which the target is a known
set of Earth coordinates. These systems are not suitable for
guidance of missiles against unpredictable targets such as
maneuvering aircraft, which requires an ability to sense the
target location in real time and respond to rapid changes. To
accomplish this, modern air defense missiles use homing
guidance, in which an on-board sensor provides the target
data on which the guidance is based. Because of the continually improving quality of target information as the missile
closes in, homing guidance provides an accuracy that is
unmatched by any other form qf missile guidance.
This paper is not a comprehensive history of its subject.
Rather, it is a summary of the author's first-hand experience,
covering the development of continuous wave (CW) radar
homing guided missiles, which were pioneered at Raytheon
Company. They form an impressive subset of all homing
missiles, .with nearly 100,000 air- and surface-launched
versions produced to date and deployed in some two dozen
countries worldwide. Derivatives of these designs form the
backbone of the U.S. Navy's ship-based defenses and similar
designs are extensively used by the Soviet Union. In reviewing
the history, technical descriptions of problems encountered
and solutions developed will be given for the three key areas
of sensor, navigation, and flight control.
y=N\
(1)
Early History
While the V-l and V-2 were the missiles with significant
military impact on World War II, Germany also did extensive
Mike W. Fossier was born in New Orleans in 1928. He attended Louisiana State University,
receiving a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1945. He subsequently received an M.S. and
Professional Degree in Aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology in 1946 and 1947.
He worked as an aerodynamicist for Douglas Aircraft Co. in 1946-1950, specializing in the
stability and control of high-speed aircraft. In 1950 he joined Raytheon's missile flight test
operation at Oxnard, Calif., where he performed analysis and design of the guidance and control
of homing missiles, including many of the fundamental issues discussed in this paper. In 1954 he
transferred to the Company's missile R&D center in Bedford, Mass., to participate in the
preliminary design of the Hawk missile system. In 1956 he became Project Engineer for the
Sparrow missile and supervised the transition from R&D into production. In 1959 he became
Chief Engineer of the Missile Systems Division, responsible for all technical activities in the
Division. In 1965 he was elected a vice-president of Raytheon and became Assistant General
ManagerTechnical of Missile Systems Division, a position he continues to hold.
Received Oct. 6, 1983; revision received Feb. 21, 1984. Copyright American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., 1984. All rights
reserved.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This manuscript was invited as a History of Key Technologies paper. It is not meant to be a comprehensive study of the field.
It represents solely the author's own recollection of events at the time and is based upon his own experiences.
641
M.W. FOSSIER
642
J. GUIDANCE
INTERCEPT
TARGET
MISSILE ,
LINE OF SIGHT
UNDERSHOOT
TARGET
MISSILE^!
L.O.S.
TARGET
L.O.S.
AMPLITUDE
2VT
A
MISSILE SPEED
TAR(
2N/ p -
CLOSING SPEED
NOV.-DEC. 1984
643
The 1950s
The December 1950 flight ushered in the crucial decade in
homing missile history. By the end of that decade, both air-toair and surface-to-air homing missiles were operationally
deployed and the pattern for future developments was firmly
set. The major steps taken in that decade are reviewed here.
An active seekerthat is, one in which the transmitter as
well as the receiver is carried in the missilehas the advantage
of being able to operate autonomously after the missile is
launched. However, achieving the necessary isolation of the
receiver from the transmitter in an active CW seeker was too
difficult a task for an early successful solution. Accordingly,
shortly after the successful flight described above, the Navy
opted for a semiactive approachthat is, one in which the
transmitter remains at the launch point and only the receiver
is flown in the missile. Further, it selected an air-to-air application and contracted with Raytheon in June 1951 to
develop a version of the Sparrow missile family using the
semiactive seeker. The Sparrow family then consisted of
Sparrow I with radar "beam rider" guidance, Sparrow II with
an active pulse radar homing seeker operating at a much
shorter wavelength, and the semiactive CW Sparrow III. A
common airframe was the unifying element of the family.
Sparrow
M.W.FOSSIER
644
J. GUIDANCE
isrv r x
0-0.6
6
10
-0.5
NOV.-DEC. 1984
N=N' (VC/VM)
so
y=N'Vc\/VM
or
M=1/2ATT2
645
M.W. FOSSIER
646
N'VC\(1+R)/(1+NR)
+ [(T+NRot/y)/(l+NR)]s
(2)
-0.06
-0.04
J. GUIDANCE
NOV.-DEC. 1984
Hawk
647
0 1
2 3 4
5 6
7 8 9
1 0
REFL
COEF
10
20
30
Fig. 13
10
20
30
GRAZING ANGLE
REFLECTION PLANE
B)
648
M.W. FOSSIER
1) It keeps the reflection coefficient below 0.5 in all circumstances, insuring first that the real target will be
dominant, resulting in an average pointing direction of the
antenna at the real target rather than the image, and second
that the magnitude of the disturbance will be well bounded.
2) It keeps the frequency of the disturbance well above the
autopilot bandwidth, so that the bounded disturbance
established above does not significantly affect the homing
trajectory and thus verifies the simplifying assumptions on
which the analysis was based.
3) As we discovered later, it improves the aerodynamic
range performance of the missile somewhat because the lower
air density at the higher altitudes more than offsets the longer
path to the target.
On the next day, we documented the analysis, which
became the focus of Wisenbaker's presentation.7 This was
sufficiently convincing to result in Army acceptance of our
proposal to perform 13 "critical tasks" considered essential
to the successful development of the low-altitude missile
system. The effort on this contract was led by Tom Phillips,
now Chairman of the Raytheon Company.
The tasks took 10 months to complete. Toward the end of
that period, the results were used as the basis of a preliminary
design of a tactical weapon system capable of meeting the
Army's requirements. The Army liked the preliminary design
and in mid-1954 awarded Raytheon a contract for
development of the Hawk system.
The image analysis was one of a whole series of activities
that were necessary, but in themselves not sufficient, to ensure
development of a successful missile system. Nevertheless, it
was a good example of the contribution that system analysis
can make in the solution of practical problems. The hardware
was designed in accordance with the dictates of the theory and
the analysis was eventually validated in all respects by subsequent flight tests. Indeed, the approach developed continues
to be used in all low-altitude homing missiles to this day. An
example of captive flight results is shown in Fig. 17 for
horizontal and vertical polarization, with the white spot
showing the seeker pointing direction.
J. GUIDANCE
NOV.-DEC. 1984
649
The 1960s
Both Sparrow and Hawk were successfully developed, put
into production (a task nearly comparable in difficulty to the
development task and also beyond the scope of this paper),
and deployed (Sparrow in 1959 and Hawk in 1960). It seemed
to be an appropriate way to close out the decade that saw the
beginning of the homing missile era. To some of us who had
lived through it, it appeared as if all the interesting problems
had been solved; this lack of foresight is not uncharacteristic
of people who are too busy to step back to view their situation
from a distance. As it happened, circumstances kept intruding
on our reverie, raising new problems to be solved. I will
review here only those bearing directly on the decisions
described above.
Sparrow
The major event of the 1960s for Sparrow was the combat
experience in Vietnam. As the history of operations accumulated, it quickly became clear that Sparrow's performance record was not living up to expectations. The
author was a member of a joint Navy/contractor team sent to
Vietnam in 1967 to gather first-hand knowledge of the air-toair problems and recommend both short- and long-term fixes.
We found that the reasons for the poor performance fell into
two categories: 1) the way in which the missile was employed,
to some extent peculiar to the unique situation in Vietnam
2) the missile performance requirements, generally applicable
to any combat.
When Sparrow was designed, it was envisioned that the
missile would be loaded on its carrying aircraft in time of war
and fired at bomber aircraft approaching the fleet. Reliability
was always a key consideration, but the critical period was
thought to be the half-minute of missile flight. In Vietnam,
these conditions did not apply. The North Vietnamese did not
use air power to attack the fleet or other U.S. positions; instead, they used interceptors at isolated times and under
conditions of their own choosing to try to disrupt U.S. air
raids on the North. As a result, months would go by without
air combat, during which the Sparrows would be carried daily
in a fully operating state of F-4s conducting ground attack
missions of several hours each.
Equally important, the avionics system (that is, the airborne radar and associated electronics) required to support
the missile had to survive these months of punishing
operation. The ground crews devoted full attention to keeping
the aircraft in the air, but aircraft elements not vital to
dropping bombs were not adequately maintained. When the
MIGs suddenly appeared, the pilot wduld try to use the air-toair system, usually unsuccessfully.
The primary lessons from this experience in missile employment lay in the areas of reliability and maintainability. As
far as the missile was concerned, Raytheon applied the many
lessons to the developmental version of "Advanced
Sparrow," now called the AIM-7F, a far more rugged missile
than its predecessors. For example, the mean time between
failure in captive flight of the AIM-7F was more than an order
650
M.W. FOSSIER
J. GUIDANCE
NOV.-DEC. 1984
Conclusions
In this article, I have given my recollections of the principal
events and technical accomplishments in the development of
the first continuous-wave radar homing missiles.
"Recollections" is, indeed, a suitably descriptive word. While
I occasionally made reference to a document to clarify a
point, the article has been written for the most part from my
own memory. I would like to conclude by adding two nontechnical points regarding the recollections.
The first has to do with my view of the flavor of the times.
On joining Raytheon as a young engineer, I found an intensity
of spirit that I had never experienced before. I felt myself
carried along in what seemed almost a crusade, sharing a
burning commitment to succeed against an immense
challenge.
.
'
.
As a result of this shared feeling, each triumph led to a
broad-based feeling of great elation. I still vividly recall the
first flight test by Lark against a low-flying drone aircraft in
1951 over the ocean at Point Mugu. The intercept was at
relatively short range and was the first to be in full view of the
handful of observers permitted on the beach. When the
missile homed unerringly to a spectacular direct hit on the
drone, the human explosion matched the one in the air. The
formal celebration ended in the wee hours of the morning, but
the emotional wave lasted for months.
On the other hand, I can still feel the despair that resulted
when a technician inadvertantly connected B + (250 V) to the
filament string, blowing out every tube in an early Sparrow
being prepared for flight test. At that time, the best flight test
engineers we had took about a month of 12-hour days to
check out a missile. The resulting delay was felt at a personal
level in every corner of the organization.
For years I attributed this intensity to the relative youth of
most of the participants. However, I found that age has
served mainly to mute their exuberance, but not their intensity, and I was forced to seek another source. My current
view is that the intensity was (and is) a result of the intellectual
challenge of the unknown. It is characteristic of the
651
References
1
7
Wisenbaker, T. C., "Image Effects in Missile Seekers," Paper
presented at Symposium on Low Altitude Target Problem, U. S.
Army Research and Development Board, Redstone Arsenal, Ala.,
Jan. 6-8, 1953.
8
Fossier, M. W., "The Role of SAMs in Tactical Warfare," Paper
presented at Conference on the Impact of New Technologies on U.S.
Defense Planning for Non-Nuclear Conflict," International Security
Studies Program, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy,
Washington, D.C., Sept. 16-18,1974.