Re: Aircraft Vs Dreadnoughts (Which is what the topic mutated into :o)

ShldWulf@aol.com wrote:

> rlbell@sympatico.ca (Richard and Emily Bell) said:
>
> >We have a terminology problem.<
>
> Speaking of missiles. You stated another communication problem we are
having:
>
> >Needless to say, the warheads need to be large, as accuracy is
inversely
> proportional to range.<
>
> OK, big difference here. Air-to-Air missiles, which are the type you
are
> pretty much discussing in your post do NOT have large warheads. The
largest
> current AIM (Air Intercept Missile) the AIM-120 only has about a 75
pound
> warhead. (I'd have to get my CDC's to be absolutely sure :o) It is not
> "light" but while it takes 4 people to lift it and move it around,
anyone
> trying that with an AGM-65 Maverick would end up with a serious
hernia. The
> AGM has a 500-or-1000 pound warhead on it I seem to recall off hand.
(Again
> we could lump the AGM-130 in here :o)

The only beam riding missile that I have any data on is the SA-2
Guideline, which
uses a 220 pound warhead, or more rarely, a small nuke.  The germans
were
experimenting with beam riding SAM's in WWII, but mercifully did not
provide the
funding that could have had an operational system in time for the
daylight raids
of B-17's, to go along with the squadrons of ME262's with wire guided
air-to-air
missiles (which were also delayed for no good reason).	The beam rider
accuracy
problem comes from the fact that the width of the beam is a solid angle,
so the
further away from transmitter, the broader the beam, and the missile has
to have
a "dead zone" in its guidance algorithm to keep it stable in flight or
minimise
amount of movement in its control surfaces.  Long range beam riding
missiles must
have large warheads to have any chance of damaging the target (which is
why they
have fallen out of use, even though they are much cheaper than
semi-active
systems).

BTW, it was never my intention to argue that the bomb does not fall in
an easily
predicted path.  The point was that looking at the illumination source
for
semi-active homer does not provide a firecontrol solution against
anything other
than the illuminator, and may not be indicative of where the laser
guided bomb is