NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Cel nav in space
From: Fred Hebard
Date: 2005 Jan 5, 11:05 -0500
From: Fred Hebard
Date: 2005 Jan 5, 11:05 -0500
GPS integrated into munitions in a significant way only debuted in the Afgan War. In the first Gulf War, the cruise missiles were still guided by terrain maps pre-programmed into their memory; it was a big hassle both to get the Gulf terrain data and then to load them into the guidance systems. It also was ironic that the down-grading of GPS accuracy for civilian use was turned OFF during the first Gulf War because the military did not have enough receivers capable of decoding the more precise info and had to resort to civilian sets. There was a recent article on the development of GPS in American Heritage's journal, "The History of Science and Technology." There also may have been a separate article on the Navy's Transit system. As I recall, imperfectly, basic navigation was the initial impulse for both systems; Transit was a Navy initiative and GPS an Air Force. I very vaguely recall that Transit was used for submarine-launched ICBMs, but I believe these were not targeted at hardened sites because of their inaccuracy in comparison to land-based missiles. That inaccuracy may have been decreased in the 80s. Fred On Jan 5, 2005, at 10:33 AM, Charles Seitz wrote: > I was told the Army Pershing intermediate range missile employed a star > tracker to trim the trajectory. The Pershing warhead section that I > saw was > marked secret so I didn't get a > chance to examine it closely. > > > --- CHAS > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Trevor J. Kenchington">> The reason for wanting an accuracy better than 100 metres with a >> thermonuclear warhead is for when you aim to crack the hardened silo >> in >> which the other guy's ICBM is (if you are lucky) still waiting to be >> fired at your now-empty silo. Outside of the circle of those who >> really >> know (but won't talk), it is widely supposed that that needs extreme >> accuracy.