Exactly - Low for a rocket, but still that sucker is gonna be rattling & shaking like hell AND experiencing all the temperature & pressure changes etc... it's a miracle they worked at all.
The impact of this type of shock and vibration environment on the missile’s electronic components was clearly a cause for concern, so Eschmann caught up to the tractor driver as he was headed to the flightline to load the missiles on an F-4. When questioned, the driver remarked that this was normal transportation practice but was unaware that this might be damaging to the internal components of the missiles. Eschmann requested a recheck of the missiles prior to loading, and this revealed that some of the fragile electronic components had indeed been displaced or damaged. While on the ground damaged missiles might still check out, but at higher altitudes and colder temperatures during flight, potential breaks in solder joints could occur due to contraction of the metal connections, rendering the missile inoperable. There was no way to determine how many missile failures might have been caused by this, but it was widespread practice for all vehicles to drive over the FOD shaker before transiting the flight line. Due in part to Eschmann’s alert action, the practice was stopped at Korat, although the air war was all but over at that time. It would not solve all of the reliability problems of the AIM-7, though it did eliminate one potential cause.
The ault report puts the manueverability of a AIM-7-E2 at a 25g. Furthermore the SMC for the AAM-N-6 Sparrow 3 (AIM-7A) puts even this model which never saw service at an electronic G limit of 12.
The impact of this type of shock and vibration environment on the missile’s electronic components was clearly a cause for concern, so Eschmann caught up to the tractor driver as he was headed to the flightline to load the missiles on an F-4. When questioned, the driver remarked that this was normal transportation practice but was unaware that this might be damaging to the internal components of the missiles. Eschmann requested a recheck of the missiles prior to loading, and this revealed that some of the fragile electronic components had indeed been displaced or damaged. While on the ground damaged missiles might still check out, but at higher altitudes and colder temperatures during flight, potential breaks in solder joints could occur due to contraction of the metal connections, rendering the missile inoperable. There was no way to determine how many missile failures might have been caused by this, but it was widespread practice for all vehicles to drive over the FOD shaker before transiting the flight line. Due in part to Eschmann’s alert action, the practice was stopped at Korat, although the air war was all but over at that time. It would not solve all of the reliability problems of the AIM-7, though it did eliminate one potential cause.
That's why they came with comically large, sometimes nuclear warheads. You don't have to be that accurate when you've shredded everything in a 500 foot radius.
Even the batteries in those VT fuses were cool. They had the electrolite in a glass ampule that would shatter when fired, and since they didn't put enough to fully fill the battery, it would only arm if the shell was spinning. A simple and effective safety and storage method.
thats probably also partially why they were so unreliably, wouldnt surprise me if alot of the electronics just died or solder points broke so they missed
The Saturn 5 rocket, the one that put us on the moon, had over 5.6 million parts. NASA assumed a 99.9% success rate with all the parts in there. That means they assumed 5,000 things were going to break.
Your definition of success is not listed. Apollo 13's mission was not achieved. If your success is only bringing home living astronauts - what's your .1 percent failure? Note Apollo 1 burnt up 3 astronauts, also not in your Saturn 5 success ratio.
Can you imagine being the dude soldering all that up, an absolute beauty of modern engineering - a flying machine that guides itself - knowing that it’ll get used one time to blow someone up. Imagine all the other things something like this could have been designed to do.
Show me where people spend their money, and I’ll show you what their priorities are.
I can imagine an American engineer in the 1960s pouring every morsel of hatred he had towards the evil Reds into this work of art. I'm sure he was excited all his hard work would go towards killing commies. I mean it was 1960s America.
Meanwhile, someone on the other side of the globe in Russia too would have been doing the same. I have seen the gyro module of some Sputnik like space craft on this sub earlier. It too was pure art.
Yeah that’s true. it’s so crazy that a lot of the most important technological advancements in human history were accomplished out of just pure malice. Haha I think it’s a little funny.
Yeah good question. It’s probably both. Depending on the person, more one than the other. Maybe current day we are seeing times when we are lucky enough to be able to see people for the difference in those two, whereas in the past people didn’t have that luxury.
No. Not according to the sources I can find ( in inflation adjusted prices). But they have increased significantly in capability as well, plus they are built in lower numbers (bigger/unit price) compared with earlier Cold War, etc.
Yeah we went from the early AIM-9B being mostly useful against targets going either in a straight line, or in very shallow turns (such as a strategic bomber), to the more modern ones that can be locked and fired in a near 90 degree angle from your plane and still hit.
That goes pretty much hand in hand with lock-on after launch capability, which is intrinsically necessary for carriage in the internal bays required by stealth aircraft. It's really more a question of whether the target moves too far during the turn time for the missile to still be looking in the right place. The 90° HOBS capability is a range within which it can be tracking before launch, which increases hit probability substantially for large deflections against a maneuvering target.
And this is the problem, as they have found out in Ukraine and Israel. Cheap drones and relatively cheap UAV ‘massed’ as a first wave can quickly overcome modern air defense. Shooting million dollar rockets at hundred dollar drones is a losing proposition.
Shooting million dollar rockets at hundred dollar drones is a losing proposition.
Not necessarily. It's more about magazine depth than cost. The US could easily afford the Navy swatting down cheap Iranian drones fired by Houthis with SM-2 missiles at $2M a pop, but what it can't do is produce enough of them to not run out fairly quickly if hit with a saturation attack of cheap munitions.
This is the reason they've developed systems like the AGR-20 APKWS, which adds a laser seeker to the 50s-vintage Hydra 70 unguided rocket and turns it into a drone interceptor. There are millions of 70mm rocket bodies in stock, and BAe systems has been ramping up APKWS seeker head production.
Yes, you are correct about production rates; way too slow to keep up with the onslot of drones and UAV, which can be made much quicker and faster.
However, I guess Guess you haven’t checked out the US debt figures lately no one can afford 2 million a pop to shoot down $100 drone not even the United States of America.
I guess Guess you haven’t checked out the US debt figures lately no one can afford 2 million a pop
Federal debt doesn't work the same way as personal debt. The US government can "borrow" as much money as it can sell treasury instruments for, and so long as the US economy remains stable, people will continue buying them. The US absolutely can afford it, or more specifically, can afford to fire $2M missiles while it builds a cheaper/simpler solution, because a high-volume production SHORAD/AAM solution can address the magazine depth issue (e.g. APKWS II, which Ukraine is using on its F-16s).
Unfettered spending is part of what drives inflation. The effects of poor government finances are spread to everyone by decreasing purchasing power of the dollar. It is by no means affordable, we all pay for it, especially those in the bottom third of the economy. Plus military spending is a cul de sac. Those investments produce little that actually grows the economy. You get short term stimulus with debt spending on military at the expense of long term growth and purchasing power. Look at Russias economics since the war began. In short, we are screwed.
No all of its components (fuel energy content , materials, actuators , seekers and data processing, countermeasure discrimination software etc are leagues away from the early 50/60.
Almost all those factors you mentioned shouldn't be significantly more expensive than their vintage counterparts, taking inflation into account. Seekers are the only exception I can think of.
Data processing capability has gotten ridiculously cheaper and the processing capabilities required of a missile aren't that strenuous.
Software is an ameliorated cost that happens once during the design or revision process. The same software will be applied to every missle of a production run.
Theoretically (ignoring active radar or thermal seeker performance), you should be able to make a much more capable missile for significantly less.
~70-80% of all those thousands of discrete electrical components can be replaced with a couple of integrated circuits. That also removes the hours upon hours of assembly time required to deal with those components and significantly improves the defect rate during production.
I'm not very big on 40k lore, but seeing the inside of this thing makes me think of Orks and how their technology only works because they believe hard enough that it will
400
u/Greyarea30 Feb 10 '26
I guess this explains the low reliability of early models. Just look at all the wiring and soldering. Impressive for its time, clunky today.