The development of radar homing missiles

Introduction S World War II, guided missiles have played an increasingly important role in warfare. Earlier papers in this series' 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 airand 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.