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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 0436.PDF
436 FLIGHT, 1 April 1960 Missiles and Spaceflight. . . SKY BOLT PROSPECTS During the past three months the British Ministry of Defencehave become increasingly conscious of the fact that a ballistic missile designed for "hard" emplacement is extremely costly andby no means invulnerable. To be speci.ic, the Blue Streak LRBM is going to cost more than had originally been hoped; and withabout 300 high-yield warheads a potential enemy could destroy everything in the British Isles, including any Blue Streaks whichmight be based here. As a result our Defence and Air staffs have been taking a closer look at delivery systems which do not needa fixed base. RAF Bomber Command will shortly have the Blue Steel stand-off bomb (this page, March 11). But even Avro, the prime con- tractor, would agree that in the present state of the art anaerodynamic-cruise weapon of limited range—even a good one— is not the best that can be achieved. The US Navy will have onesubmarine operational with the Polaris ballistic missile by the end of the year, and the nine ships so far authorized will mean 144Polaris deployed at sea by the end of 1962. The Royal Navy, however, does not have the kind of money needed to buy suchweapon systems, and even with unlimited finance could not pro- duce its own submarine-missile system before about 1966 (mostAdmirals would consider even this optimistic). One is left with Sky Bolt. Sky Bolt is the.first air-launched ballistic missile (ALBM) tobe developed in the West. The concept of an ALBM originated with the US Air Force early in 1957. In that year the decisionwas taken to invite technically capable companies to conduct feasibility studies, and this materialized as an investigation ofWeapon System 199. Using money from Fiscal Year 1958, con- tracts were placed with Lockheed/Con vair, Martin andMcDonnell. All the work was of a low-cost nature, and it was aimed at finding the answers to such basic problems as establish-ing the basic design of an ALBM, sorting out the problems of navigation and guidance of the parent aircraft and the missile,and determining the likely accuracy, timing and cost. AH three contractors fired many full-scale test vehicles (oneis illustrated here) and their reports indicated that the system was feasible, the optimum configuration being that of a slender two-stage vehicle with a solid-propellant charge in both stages. Accord- ingly the USAF wrote the requirements for Weapon System 138A;15 companies submitted proposals, and last May Douglas Aircraft were awarded the prime contract, following the usual intensiveevaluation by the Air Force Source Selection Board (made up of members of AMC, ARDC and SAC) and a review of the technical,management, production and other capabilities of the firms concerned. Although Douglas have been awarded the prime contractWS-138A is a co-operative effort, and it incorporates all the knowledge, and some of the components, stemming from thefeasibility studies. Early this year the Department of Defense allowed the programme to move out of the research phase and toenter full development, and an accelerated programme was announced in February. In the next financial year, beginningon July 1, about $60m will be spent on it. Designation of the A "Flight" artist has worked on the photograph (top of page) of Vulcan B.ls to give an idea of how Sky Bolt might be carried and fired. Although Sky Bolt itself has yet to be built, many test vehicles were fired during the WS-199 programme. Below is shown a WS-199B vehicle developed by Martin, one of which was launched on October 13 last into the vicinity of the Explorer 6 satellite wmmM missile is GAM-87A Sky Bolt. In August last, Aerojet-Generalwere named as sub-contractor for the propulsion system. I nOctober Douglas revealed their choice of the Nortronics Division of Northrop as sub-contractor for guidance. General Electric havebeen assigned the task of developing the re-entry vehicle. The design range of the missile is 1,000 to 1,500 n.m. Owingto its modest size (launch weight will be about 9,0001b) two or more can be carried by most bombers, and when hung from apylon it will offer little drag. Although the parent aircraft could pull up into a climb before launching the missile, the optimumprocedure is for release to be made in level flight at about 40,000ft. Initially it will drop free; then, following first-stage ignition, it willclimb ahead of the bomber and describe a ballistic out-of- atmosphere trajectory. The need to pull up from level flightmeans that the weapon will either have aerodynamic controls or, more probably, will have jetevators in the multiple nozzles of thefirst-stage engine. Nothing about the system appears likely to give any troubleexcept for the question of guidance. Never before has the guidance problem been quite so acute; the launch point must befixed precisely in space in all three dimensions, and the time of launch and the need to establish cut-off at exactly the right pointwill also require further research. In the case of Hound Dog (the USAF equivalent of Blue Steel) a stellar/inertial system isemployed, star-trackers in both the missile and its pylon being employed to monitor the inertial system and improve the naviga-tion of both the Hound Dog and its parent aircraft. Blue Steel has an all-inertial system (by Elliott Bros) which is linked with thenavigation of the parent aircraft. In conclusion, it is worth noting that the concept of an ALBMremoves much of the burden of penetration from the parent air- craft, so that the latter need not be a "bomber" at all. Evenpropeller-driven machines have been suggested in America, in order to reduce the cost of maintaining a standing patrol of SkyBolt launchers. Operational capability of GAM-87A is scheduled for 1963, and by the end of mat year most B-52G and B-52Haircraft of SAC should be carrying one under each wing. If production Sky Bolts were simply sold to the United Kingdom ona cash basis—we could readily develop our own warhead—there seems little reason why Bomber Command should not be opera-tional with it in 1964. Both the Victor and Vulcan could use the missile, and so could any other big jet aeroplane. W. T. G. Late last month the first US Army Lacrosse battalion sailed fordeployment in Germany The second battalion will follow this month. For two years some 290 Greek officers and men have been training on US Army missiles at Fort Bliss, Texas. By July a Nike-Hercules battalion is expected to be deployed in their own country. On March 16 US Army troops at White Sands fired a Redstone con- taining a damage-assessment capsule. The idea, which may become standard, is that the capsule should be ejected shortly before impact and, while descending by parachute, transmit TV pictures of the results ot the strike. A Martin Titan C-series ICBM was successfully launched from CapeCanaveral on March 22. The two-stage weapon flew more than 5,uw miles down-range, and the USAF stated that "all test objectives weremet and the nosecone landed on its intended impact area. i« nosecone was subsequently recovered near Ascension Island. It was revealed by "an American military spokesman" on March 14that in January a USAF Matador bombardment missile "veered on course" during a flight from the Chinese Nationalist-held island mFormosa. Apparently Matadors are frequently fired eastwards trom Formosa, but on this occasion the big missile crashed in the FormosStrait between the island and the Chinese mainland. Lear Inc have received $2.25m to enable their instrument ^^fat Grand Rapids, Michigan, to continue working on the gyroscopi reference unit in the radar guidance system of the US Army NiKe-^w •The new contract brings to $9.3m Lear's total participation ^.jf- since their original contract from Bell Telephone Laboratory sMarch 1957.
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