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Aviation History
1982
1982 - 0071.PDF
SCIENCE SCOPE Airborne TOW anti-tank missiles scored 100 percent hits in 11 firings from a West German BO-105 CB helicopter. The tests, held at the West German armed forces firing range at Meppen, were designed to evaluate the TOW sight control. The helicopter was flown by Messerschmitt-Boelkow-Blohm pilots. Two company technicians acted as gunners after only two hours of airborne instruction. One had never fired a weapon before. Firings were made from as far away as 3200 meters, well under the maximum range of 3750 meters. Hughes has delivered more than 1000 airborne TOW (Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided) systems for installation on eight types of foreign and U.S.-built helicopters. Japan's newest weather satellite, now keeping watch over the vast western Pacific region, represents strong international teamwork. GMS-2 (Geostationary Meteorological Satellite) was designed, developed, and built by Hughes under contract to Nippon Electric Company. Nippon Electric assembled many of the satellite's electronic units and built a scientific instrument called a Space Environment Monitor, which measures energetic protons in space. Sharp Corpora tion of Japan provided a portion of the solar cells. GMS-2 was procured and launched by Japan's National Space Development Agency. It is operated by the Japanese Meteorological Agency as part of the World Weather Watch. An automated radar test system will help technicians quickly repair the F/A-18 Hornet's radar in the field. The AN/USM-469 system is suitable for U.S. Navy ships and U.S. Marine Corps vans. It consists of five and a half bays of test equipment and a single-bay liquid cooler system, and uses standard production test software. One operator position tests the AN/APG-65 radar's transmitter, antenna, and receiver-exciter. A second tests the radar signal processor and radar data processor. Hughes, which builds the APG-65, recently completed the first engineering test system under contract to McDonnell Douglas Corp. The first carbon-dioxide laser rangefinder developed in the U.S. for tactical military use offers several advantages over existing solid-state lasers to im prove the first-round accuracy of tank gunners. The new laser, being developed at Hughes for the Army's Ml main battle tank, will penetrate battlefield smoke and dust much better. Because the laser is harmless to the human eye and requires minimal safety restrictions to be operated, gunners will have more training time than they do with the solid-state unit and will become more proficient. The Army is evaluating an advanced development model. A new adaptive radar, using technology that could be applied in the future to t many different weapon control systems, has completed feasibility tests. The radar, called FLEXAR (Flexible Adaptive Radar), uses a multimode transmitter and a programmable signal processor that are now in production, plus a new light weight, low-cost electronically-scanned antenna. The antenna rotates once each second while the beam electronically scans up and down and back and forth. *- Waveforms are selected automatically to match the environment. Such flexibility enables the radar to adapt its waveform beamwidth and scan rate as needed to acquire and track targets. Hughes developed FLEXAR for the U.S. Navy. i , I HUGHES j i 1 HUGHES AIRCRAFT COMPANY INTERNATIONAL
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