Fire-control system
Encyclopedia
Note: the term "fire control" may also refer to means of stopping a fire, such as sprinkler system
Fire sprinkler
A fire sprinkler system is an active fire protection measure, consisting of a water supply system, providing adequate pressure and flowrate to a water distribution piping system, onto which fire sprinklers are connected...

s.


A fire-control system is a number of components working together, usually a gun data computer
Gun Data Computer
The gun data computer is a series of artillery computers used by the U.S. Army, for coastal artillery, field artillery, and antiaircraft artillery applications...

, a director
Director (military)
A director, also called an auxiliary predictor, is a mechanical or electronic computer that continuously calculates trigonometric firing solutions for use against a moving target, and transmits targeting data to direct the weapon firing crew....

, and radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...

, which is designed to assist a weapon system
Weapon system
Weapon System is a United States military term that designated, along with a weapon system number , military experimental systems prior to official naming Weapon System is a United States military term that designated, along with a weapon system number (e.g., WS-110), military experimental (MX)...

 in hitting its target. It performs the same task as a human gunner firing a weapon, but attempts to do so faster and more accurately.

History

The original fire-control systems were developed for ships. When gunnery ranges increased dramatically in the late 19th century it was no longer a simple matter of calculating the proper aim point given the flight times of the shells. Increasingly sophisticated mechanical calculators
Analog computer
An analog computer is a form of computer that uses the continuously-changeable aspects of physical phenomena such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantities to model the problem being solved...

 were employed for proper gunlaying
Gun laying
Gun laying is the process of aiming an artillery piece, such as a gun, howitzer or mortar on land or at sea against surface or air targets. It may be laying for direct fire, where the gun is aimed similarly to a rifle, or indirect fire, where firing data is calculated and applied to the sights...

, typically with various spotters and distance measures being sent to a central plotting station deep within the ship. There the fire direction teams fed in the location, speed and direction of the ship and its target, as well as various adjustments for Coriolis effect
Coriolis effect
In physics, the Coriolis effect is a deflection of moving objects when they are viewed in a rotating reference frame. In a reference frame with clockwise rotation, the deflection is to the left of the motion of the object; in one with counter-clockwise rotation, the deflection is to the right...

, weather effects on the air, and other adjustments. The resulting directions, known as a firing solution, would then be fed back out to the turrets for laying. If the rounds missed, an observer could work out how far they missed by and in which direction, and this information could be fed back into the computer along with any changes in the rest of the information and another shot attempted.

Submarines were also equipped with fire control computers for the same reasons, but their problem was even more pronounced; in a typical "shot", the torpedo
Torpedo
The modern torpedo is a self-propelled missile weapon with an explosive warhead, launched above or below the water surface, propelled underwater towards a target, and designed to detonate either on contact with it or in proximity to it.The term torpedo was originally employed for...

 would take one to two minutes to reach its target. Calculating the proper "lead" given the relative motion of the two vessels was very difficult, and torpedo data computers
Torpedo Data Computer
The Torpedo Data Computer was an early electromechanical analog computer used for torpedo fire-control on American submarines during World War II . Britain, Germany, and Japan also developed automated torpedo fire control equipment, but none were as advanced as US Navy's TDC...

 were added to dramatically improve the speed of these calculations.

The Dreyer Table fire control system was already fitted to British capital ships by mid 1916. It was claimed to been plagiarised from earlier work by Arthur Pollen
Arthur Pollen
Arthur Joseph Hungerford Pollen was a writer on naval affairs in the early 1900s who recognised the need for a computer-based fire-control system...

, but given the differences between the two designs this is now disputed. Pollen's final "clock" (computer), the Argo Mark V was installed on ships of the Imperial Russian Navy
Imperial Russian Navy
The Imperial Russian Navy refers to the Tsarist fleets prior to the February Revolution.-First Romanovs:Under Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich, construction of the first three-masted ship, actually built within Russia, was completed in 1636. It was built in Balakhna by Danish shipbuilders from Holstein...

. An improved development the "Admiralty Fire Control Table
Admiralty Fire Control Table
thumb|Admiralty Fire Control Table in the transmitting station of [[HMS Belfast |HMS Belfast]].The Admiralty Fire Control Table was an electromechanical analogue computer fire-control system that calculated the correct elevation and deflection of a Royal Navy cruiser or battleships' main armament,...

" was in use in 1927.

By the start of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, aircraft altitude performance had increased so much that anti-aircraft guns had similar predictive problems, and were increasingly equipped with fire-control computers. The main difference between these systems and the ones on ships was size and speed. The early versions of the High Angle Control System, or HACS, of Britain's Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

 were examples of a system that predicted based upon the assumption that target speed, direction, and altitude would remain constant during the prediction cycle, which consisted of the time to fuze the shell and the time of flight of the shell to the target. The USN Mk 37 system made similar assumptions except that it could predict based upon a constant rate of altitude change. The Kerrison Predictor
Kerrison Predictor
The Kerrison Predictor was one of the first fully automated anti-aircraft fire-control systems. The predictor could aim a gun at an aircraft based on simple inputs like the observed speed and the angle to the target...

 is an example of a system that was built to solve laying in "real time", simply by pointing the director at the target and then aiming the gun at a pointer it directed. It was also deliberately designed to be small and light, in order to allow it to be easily moved along with the guns it served.

Simple systems, known as lead computing sights also made their appearance inside aircraft late in the war. These devices used a gyroscope
Gyroscope
A gyroscope is a device for measuring or maintaining orientation, based on the principles of angular momentum. In essence, a mechanical gyroscope is a spinning wheel or disk whose axle is free to take any orientation...

 to measure turn rates, and moved the gunsight's aim-point to take this into account. The only manual "input" to the sight was the target distance, which was typically handled by dialing in the size of the target's wing span at some known range. Small radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...

 units were added in the post-war period to automate even this input, but it was some time before they were fast enough to make the pilots completely happy with them.

The United States Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

 deployed the Mark I Fire Control Computer
Mark I Fire Control Computer
The Mark 1, and later the Mark 1A, Fire Control Computer was a component of the Mark 37 Gun Fire Control System deployed by the United States Navy during World War II and up to 1969. It was used on a variety of ships, ranging from destroyers to battleships . The Mark 37 system used tachymetric...

 on many of its vessels constructed during World War II.

Modern fire-control computers, like all high-performance computers, are digital. The added performance allows basically any input to be added, from air density and wind, to wear on the barrels and distortion due to heating. These sorts of effects are noticeable for any sort of gun, and fire-control computers have started appearing on smaller and smaller platforms. Tanks were one early use, automating gun laying using a laser rangefinder and a barrel-distortion meter. Fire-control computers are not just useful for large cannon
Cannon
A cannon is any piece of artillery that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellents to launch a projectile. Cannon vary in caliber, range, mobility, rate of fire, angle of fire, and firepower; different forms of cannon combine and balance these attributes in varying degrees,...

s. They can be used to aim machine guns, small cannons, guided missile
Guided Missile
Guided Missile is a London based independent record label set up by Paul Kearney in 1994.Guided Missile has always focused on 'the underground', preferring to put out a steady flow of releases and developing the numerous GM events around London and beyond....

s, rifle
Rifle
A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves cut into the barrel walls. The raised areas of the rifling are called "lands," which make contact with the projectile , imparting spin around an axis corresponding to the...

s, grenade
Grenade
A grenade is a small explosive device that is projected a safe distance away by its user. Soldiers called grenadiers specialize in the use of grenades. The term hand grenade refers any grenade designed to be hand thrown. Grenade Launchers are firearms designed to fire explosive projectile grenades...

s, rocket
Rocket
A rocket is a missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other vehicle which obtains thrust from a rocket engine. In all rockets, the exhaust is formed entirely from propellants carried within the rocket before use. Rocket engines work by action and reaction...

s—any kind of weapon which can have its launch or firing parameters varied. They are typically installed on ship
Ship
Since the end of the age of sail a ship has been any large buoyant marine vessel. Ships are generally distinguished from boats based on size and cargo or passenger capacity. Ships are used on lakes, seas, and rivers for a variety of activities, such as the transport of people or goods, fishing,...

s, submarine
Submarine
A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...

s, aircraft
Aircraft
An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air, or, in general, the atmosphere of a planet. An aircraft counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines.Although...

, tank
Tank
A tank is a tracked, armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat which combines operational mobility, tactical offensive, and defensive capabilities...

s and even on some rifle
Rifle
A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves cut into the barrel walls. The raised areas of the rifling are called "lands," which make contact with the projectile , imparting spin around an axis corresponding to the...

s, for example the Fabrique Nationale F2000
FN F2000
The FN F2000 is a 5.56×45mm NATO bullpup assault rifle, designed by FN Herstal in Belgium. The F2000 made its debut in March 2001 at the IDEX defense exhibition held in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates.-Design details:...

. Fire-control computers have gone through all stages of technology that computers have, with some designs being based upon analogue technology
Analog computer
An analog computer is a form of computer that uses the continuously-changeable aspects of physical phenomena such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantities to model the problem being solved...

 and vacuum tube
Vacuum tube
In electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube , or thermionic valve , reduced to simply "tube" or "valve" in everyday parlance, is a device that relies on the flow of electric current through a vacuum...

s which were later replaced with transistor
Transistor
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals and power. It is composed of a semiconductor material with at least three terminals for connection to an external circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals changes the current...

s.

Fire-control systems are often interfaced with sensor
Sensor
A sensor is a device that measures a physical quantity and converts it into a signal which can be read by an observer or by an instrument. For example, a mercury-in-glass thermometer converts the measured temperature into expansion and contraction of a liquid which can be read on a calibrated...

s (such as sonar
Sonar
Sonar is a technique that uses sound propagation to navigate, communicate with or detect other vessels...

, radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...

, infra-red search and track
Infra-red search and track
An infra-red search and track system is a method for detecting and tracking objects which give off infra-red radiation such as jet aircraft and helicopters. IRST is a generalized case of Forward Looking Infra-Red , i.e. from Forward-Looking to allround situational awareness...

, laser range-finder
Laser range-finder
A laser rangefinder is a device which uses a laser beam to determine the distance to an object. The most common form of laser rangefinder operates on the time of flight principle by sending a laser pulse in a narrow beam towards the object and measuring the time taken by the pulse to be reflected...

s, anemometers, wind vanes, thermometer
Thermometer
Developed during the 16th and 17th centuries, a thermometer is a device that measures temperature or temperature gradient using a variety of different principles. A thermometer has two important elements: the temperature sensor Developed during the 16th and 17th centuries, a thermometer (from the...

s, etc.) in order to cut down or eliminate the amount of information which has to be manually inputted in order to calculate an effective solution. Sonar, radar, IRST and range-finders can give the system the direction to and/or distance of the target. Alternatively, an optical sight can be provided and an operator can point it at the target, which is easier than having someone input it using other methods and gives the target less warning that it is being tracked. Typically, weapons fired over long ranges need the environmental information—the longer a munition travels, the more the wind, temperature etc. will affect its trajectory, so the more important having accurate information becomes to getting a good solution. Sometimes, for very long-range rockets, environmental data has to be obtained at high altitudes or in between the launching point and the target. Often, satellites or balloons are used to gather this information.

Once the firing solution is calculated, many modern fire-control systems are also able to aim and fire the weapon(s). Once again, this is in the interest of speed and accuracy, and also in the case of a vehicle like an aircraft or tank, in order to allow the pilot/gunner/etc. to perform other actions simultaneously, such as tracking the target or flying the aircraft. Even if the system is unable to aim the weapon itself, for example the fixed cannon on an aircraft, it is able to give the operator cues on how to aim. Typically, the cannon points straight ahead and the pilot must maneuver the aircraft so that it points in the right direction before firing. In most aircraft the aiming cue takes the form of a "pipper" which is projected on the heads-up display (HUD). The pipper shows the pilot where the target must be relative to the aircraft in order to hit it. Once the pilot maneuvers the aircraft so that the target and pipper are superimposed, he or she fires the weapon, or on some aircraft the weapon will fire automatically at this point, in order to overcome the reaction delay of the pilot. In the case of a missile launch, the fire-control computer may give the pilot feedback about whether the target is in range of the missile and how likely the missile is to hit if launched at any particular moment. The pilot will then wait until the probability reading is satisfactorily high before launching the weapon.

Naval fire control

The situation for naval fire control was more complex because of the need to control the firing of several guns at once. In naval engagements both the firing guns and target are moving, and the variables are compounded by the greater distances and times involved. Naval gun fire control potentially involves three levels of complexity. Local control originated with primitive gun installations aimed by the individual gun crews. Director control aims all guns on the ship at a single target. Coordinated gunfire from a formation of ships at a single target was a focus of battleship fleet operations. Corrections are made for surface wind velocity, firing ship roll and pitch, powder magazine temperature, drift of rifled projectiles, individual gun bore diameter adjusted for shot-to-shot enlargement, and rate of change of range with additional modifications to the firing solution based upon the observation of preceding shots.

Rudimentary naval fire control systems were first developed around the time of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. For a description of one, see US Naval Fire Control, 1918.

For the UK, their first system was built before the Great War. At the heart was an analogue computer designed by Commander (later Admiral Sir) Frederic Charles Dreyer
Frederic Charles Dreyer
Admiral Sir Frederic Charles Dreyer, GBE, KCB was an officer of the Royal Navy who developed a fire control system for British warships...

 that calculated rate of change of range. The Dreyer Table was to be improved and served into the interwar period at which point it was superseded in new and reconstructed ships by the Admiralty Fire Control Table
Admiralty Fire Control Table
thumb|Admiralty Fire Control Table in the transmitting station of [[HMS Belfast |HMS Belfast]].The Admiralty Fire Control Table was an electromechanical analogue computer fire-control system that calculated the correct elevation and deflection of a Royal Navy cruiser or battleships' main armament,...

.For a description of an Admiralty Fire Control Table in action:

The use of Director controlled firing together with the fire control computer moved the control of the gun laying from the individual turrets to a central position; although individual gun mounts and multi-gun turrets may retain a local control option for use when battle damage limits director information transfer (these would be simpler versions called "turret tables" in the RN). Guns could then be fired in planned salvos, with each gun giving a slightly different trajectory. Dispersion of shot caused by differences in individual guns, individual projectiles, powder ignition sequences, and transient distortion of ship structure was undesirably large at typical naval engagement ranges. Directors high on the superstructure had a better view of the enemy than a turret mounted sight, and the crew operating them were distant from the sound and shock of the guns. Gun directors were topmost, and the ends of their optical rangefinders protruded from their sides, giving them a distinctive appearance.

Unmeasured and uncontrollable ballistic factors like high altitude temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, wind direction and velocity required final adjustment through observation of fall of shot. Visual range measurement (of both target and shell splashes) was difficult prior to availability of Radar. The British favoured coincident rangefinder
Coincidence rangefinder
A coincidence rangefinder is a type of rangefinder that uses mechanical and optical principles to allow an operator to determine the distance to a visible object....

s while the Germans favored the stereoscopic type. The former were less able to range on an indistinct target but easier on the operator over a long period of use, the latter the reverse.

In a typical WWII British ship the fire control system connected the individual gun turrets to the director tower (where the sighting instruments were) and the analogue computer in the heart of the ship. In the director tower, operators trained their telescopes on the target; one telescope measured elevation and the other bearing. Rangefinder telescopes on a separate mounting measured the distance to the target. These measurements were converted by the Fire Control Table into bearings and elevations for the guns to fire on. In the turrets, the gunlayers adjusted the elevation of their guns to match an indicator which was the elevation transmitted from the Fire Control table - a turret layer did the same for bearing. When the guns were on target they were centrally fired.

Even with as much mechanization of the process, it still required a large human element; the Transmitting Station (the room that housed the Dreyer table) for HMS Hoods main guns housed 27 crew.

For U.S. Navy gun fire control systems, see ship gun fire-control systems.

Directors were largely unprotected from enemy fire. It was difficult to put much weight into armour so high up on the ship and even if the armour did stop a shot the impact alone would likely knock the instruments out of alignment. Sufficient armour to protect from smaller shells and fragments from hits to other parts of the ship was the limit.

Coast Artillery Fire Control

In the United States, Coast Artillery fire control system
Coast Artillery fire control system
In the U.S. Coast Artillery, the term fire control system was used to refer to the personnel, facilities, technology and procedures that were used to observe designated targets, estimate their positions, calculate firing data for guns directed to hit those targets, and assess the effectiveness of...

s began to be developed at the end of the 19th Century and progressed on through WW2.

Early systems made use of multiple observation or base end station
Base end station
Base end stations were used by the U.S Coast Artillery as part of fire control systems for locating the positions of attacking ships and controlling the firing of seacoast guns, mortars, or mines to defend against them....

s (see figure at left) to find and track targets attacking American harbors. Data from these stations were then passed to plotting room
Plotting room
A plotting room was used by the U.S. Coast Artillery to house a team of soldiers who were engaged in controlling fire for the guns of a Coast Artillery battery...

s, where analog mechanical devices, such as the plotting board
Plotting board
A plotting board was a mechanical device used by the U.S. Coast Artillery to track the observed course of a target , project its future position, and derive the uncorrected data on azimuth and range needed to direct the fire of the guns of a battery to hit that target...

, were used to estimate targets' positions and derive firing data for batteries of coastal guns assigned to interdict them.

U.S. Coast Artillery forts bristled with a variety of armament, ranging from 12-inch coast defense mortars, through 3-inch and 6-inch mid-range artillery, to the larger guns, which included 10-inch and 12-inch barbette and disappearing carriage guns, 14-inch railroad artillery, and 16-inch cannon installed just prior to and up through WW2.

Fire control in the Coast Artillery became more and more sophisticated in terms of correcting firing data
Corrected firing data
Corrected firing data was a term used in the U.S. Coast Artillery to refer to firing data that had been corrected for various "non-standard conditions." This could include corrections to range and corrections to azimuth or deflection...

 for such factors as weather conditions, the condition of powder used, or the Earth's rotation. Provisions were also made for adjusting firing data for the observed fall of shells. As shown in the figure at right, all of these data were fed back to the plotting rooms on a finely tuned schedule controlled by a system of time interval bells that rang throughout each harbor defense system.

It was only later in WW2 that electro-mechanical gun data computers, connected to coast defense radars, began to replace optical observation and manual plotting methods in controlling coast artillery. Even then, the manual methods were retained as a back-up through the end of the war.

Ground use

Once an engagement has begun, it is also possible for a fire control radar to track incoming fire, trace back the trajectories to their source, and produce the coordinates of an enemy unwise enough to fire ballistic rounds. This return-fire capability has been included in some systems since the 1970s. Returning fire to the location of the rounds' origin is known as counter-battery fire
Counter-battery fire
Counter-battery fire is a type of mission assigned to military artillery forces, which are given the task of locating and firing upon enemy artillery.-Background:...

.

World War II bomb sights

An early use of fire-control systems was in bomber aircraft, with the use of computing bombsight
Bombsight
A bombsight is a device used by bomber aircraft to accurately drop bombs. In order to do this, the bombsight has to estimate the path the bomb will take after release from the aircraft. The two primary forces during its fall are gravity and air drag, which makes the path of the bomb through the air...

s that accepted altitude and airspeed information to predict and display the impact point of a bomb released at that time. The best known US device was the Norden bombsight
Norden bombsight
The Norden bombsight was a tachometric bombsight used by the United States Army Air Forces and the United States Navy during World War II, and the United States Air Force in the Korean and the Vietnam Wars to aid the crew of bomber aircraft in dropping bombs accurately...

.

World War II aerial gunnery sights

Simple systems, known as lead computing sights also made their appearance inside aircraft late in the war. These devices used a gyroscope
Gyroscope
A gyroscope is a device for measuring or maintaining orientation, based on the principles of angular momentum. In essence, a mechanical gyroscope is a spinning wheel or disk whose axle is free to take any orientation...

 to measure turn rates, and moved the gunsight's aim-point to take this into account, with the aim point presented through a reflector sight
Reflector sight
A reflector or reflex sight is a generally non-magnifying optical device that allows the user to look through a partially reflecting glass element and see an illuminated projection of an aiming point or some other image superimposed on the field of view...

. The only manual "input" to the sight was the target distance, which was typically handled by dialing in the size of the target's wing span at some known range. Small radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...

 units were added in the post-war period to automate even this input, but it was some time before they were fast enough to make the pilots completely happy with them.

Post-World War II systems

By the start of the Vietnam War, a new computerized bombing predictor called the Low-Altitude Bombing System (LABS) began to be integrated into the systems of aircraft equipped to carry nuclear armaments. This new bomb computer was revolutionary in that the actual release command for the bomb was given by the computer, not the pilot; the pilot designated the target using the radar or other targeting system, then "consented" to release the weapon, and the computer then did so at a calculated "release point" some seconds later. This is very different from previous systems which, though they had also become computerized, still calculated an "impact point" showing where the bomb would fall if the bomb were released at that moment. The key advantage is that the weapon can be released accurately even when the plane is making a maneuver such as a climb or dive. Most bombsights until this time required that the plane maintain a constant attitude (usually level, though dive-bombing sights were also common).

The LABS system was originally designed to facilitate a tactic called toss bombing
Toss bombing
Toss bombing is a method of bombing where the attacking aircraft pulls upwards when releasing its bomb load, giving the bomb additional time of flight by starting its ballistic path with an upward vector.The purpose of toss bombing is to compensate for the gravity drop of the...

, to allow the aircraft to remain out of range of a weapon's blast radius
Explosion
An explosion is a rapid increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner, usually with the generation of high temperatures and the release of gases. An explosion creates a shock wave. If the shock wave is a supersonic detonation, then the source of the blast is called a "high explosive"...

. The principle of calculating the release point, however, was eventually integrated into the Fire Control Computers of later bombers and strike aircraft, allowing level, dive and toss bombing. In addition, as the fire control computer became integrated with ordinance systems, the computer can take the flight characteristics of the weapon to be launched into account.

See also

  • Ship gun fire-control systems
  • Director (military)
    Director (military)
    A director, also called an auxiliary predictor, is a mechanical or electronic computer that continuously calculates trigonometric firing solutions for use against a moving target, and transmits targeting data to direct the weapon firing crew....

  • Predicted impact point
    Predicted impact point
    The predicted impact point is the location that a ballistic projectile is expected to strike if fired. The PIP is almost always actively determined by a targeting computer, which then projects a PIP marker onto a Head-Up Display...

  • Fire-control radar
    Fire-control radar
    A fire-control radar is a radar which is designed specifically to provide information to a fire-control system in order to calculate a firing solution...

  • Coast Artillery fire control system
    Coast Artillery fire control system
    In the U.S. Coast Artillery, the term fire control system was used to refer to the personnel, facilities, technology and procedures that were used to observe designated targets, estimate their positions, calculate firing data for guns directed to hit those targets, and assess the effectiveness of...

  • Counter-battery radar
    Counter-battery radar
    A counter-battery radar detects artillery projectiles fired by one or more guns, howitzers, mortars and rocket launchers and from their trajectories locates the position on the ground of the gun, etc., that fired it. Alternatively, or in addition, it may determine where the projectile will land...

  • Dumaresq
    Dumaresq
    The Dumaresq is a mechanical calculating device invented around 1902 by Lieutenant John Dumaresq of the Royal Navy.The dumaresq is an analog computer which relates vital variables of the fire control problem to the movement of one's own ship and that of a target ship...

  • Gun data computer
    Gun Data Computer
    The gun data computer is a series of artillery computers used by the U.S. Army, for coastal artillery, field artillery, and antiaircraft artillery applications...


External links

  • http://books.google.com/books?id=sExvSbe9MSsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Between+Human+and+Machine

  • http://www3.telus.net/public/idougl88/bshipweb.txt
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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