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Introduction to missile guidance
After a stint working in California for General Dynamics, I moved back to my home state of Indiana and took a job as a member of research staff for another defense contractor in southern Indiana. I got this job because of my prior experience with the Aegis weapon system which I had gained from working on the missile component of the weapon system in California.
I need to be careful writing about this topic since at the time I worked for General Dynamics I was required to hold a secret clearance.
The sole customer of my new employer was the department of the Navy which concentrated on the radar component of the Aegis system.
At General Dynamics, I focused on the missile end of the Aegis system, now my focus would be the radar portion of the weapon system.
You can classify guided weapon systems into three categories. Passive, such as infrared guidance such as the Stinger system. Active, an example would be a missile that houses its own radar, (known as a smart missile dumb ship), or semi-active(known as a dumb missile smart ship) which is the kind of guided weapon system that the Aegis is.
The Navy's Aegis system is what is known as a semi-active weapon system. A ground or ship radar paints a target in the sky with radiation. The radiation then reflects off the target and is picked up by the seeker head of the missile. The seeker's head then adjusts the direction of the missile by calculations involving azimuth (horizon angle) and elevation.
One of the few practical examples of Calculus I can think of that I have come across is used in missile guidance. The first derivative of distance with respect to time is velocity. The second derivative of distance with respect to time is acceleration.
More famous is the Aegis system's sister weapon system the Patriot weapon system used for defense by shooting incoming missiles out of the sky. The United States recently deployed patriotic weapon systems to Poland in response to Russian aggression against Ukraine.
The radiation produced by the radar was so strong that there were some reports of sailors pointing the radar at passing fowl and microwaving them in mid-air.
I mostly developed software for test equipment used to test the components of the radar. Some of the components I developed software for were antennas and cross-field amplifiers which could be thought of as a cathode ray tube on steroids.
It seems contrary to logic to think of a Naval facility in land-locked Southern Indiana, but one exists, originally used for the storage of ordinance. The office of the defense contractor I worked for was located in Bloomington Indiana about 40 miles (ca. 64 km) away from the Crane Naval weapon facility.
Bloomington is a college town that hosts Indiana University with a peak population of about 50,000 people. It was quite a culture shock moving there from Los Angeles County.
I had an office in the basement of an office building on the courthouse square. It was a rustic-looking office with the original bricks and mortar being the wall view.
I used to ride a motorcycle from Bloomington to Crane Indiana often. It was a beautiful ride through winding roads with rolling hills, a great way to start a day.