Main components of the combat missile

The Modern rocket is, in effect, a complex mechanism consisting of thousands of intricate details. The complexity of its design can be easily seen from the fact that V-2, a rocket developed by the Germans towards the end of World War II, consisted of approximately 30,000 parts. The V-2 when judged by the present day standards is a crude and primitive job.

An Atlas (a modern intercontinental ballistic missile) contains over 300,000 precision parts. To produce a modern antimissile missile Hawk the coordinated effort of 40 European and 12 US companies is needed, while the production documentation for this missile includes some components which support the systems integral to the missile.

The designs of modern missiles are many and diverse. Any missile however consists of several major parts: a propulsion system, propellants for that system, storage tanks for the propellants, structure which is able to communicate the propulsive thrust to the payload, a guidance system, auxiliary power supplies and payload (in the case of the combat missile the payload is conventional, nuclear or thermonuclear charge). The propellant storage tanks and the general structure are often known as the airframe. The airframe of a ballistic missile is then defined as the assembled structural and aerodynamic areas; and of delivering accurate fire on distant targets which are capable of affecting the execution of Army’s combat mission.

Both the single-stage and each stage of the two-stage vehicle contain a rocket engine, two propellant tanks, one for fuel and the other for oxidizer. A turbopump assembly drives the propellant from the tanks to the engines. These assembles consist of a fuel pump and a propellant pump driven by a turbine. The missile is controlled in flight by a control system which operates thrust vector steering devices. The control signals are generated as a result of commands from a guidance system which determines whether or not the vehicle is on the correct path to reach its target. An auxiliary power supply supplies electrical and hydraulic power for the various devices and sub-systems within the vehicle as opposed to the main propulsion power supplied by the rocket engines. The re-entry body contains the warhead, the fuse, the arming mechanism, and the re-entry guidance equipment. When a two-stage vehicle is used, some but not all of these sub-systems are duplicated in first and second stages.

An overall block diagram of a typical two-stage solid-propellant ballistic vehicle is shown in Fig. The first and second stages contain a solid-propellant rocket motor. This motor consists of a solid-propellant charge and an exhaust nozzle system. It has a thrust termination system to cut off the thrust when the desired velocity has been reached for the payload. In addition, it has a thrust vector control which can direct the thrust for trajectory control.

As with the liquid-propellant missiles, flight control is obtained through the use of a control system which operates the thrust vector steering device. The control signals are generated as a result of commands from a guidance system which determines whether or not the vehicle is on the correct path to reach its target. An auxiliary power supply supplies electrical and hydraulic power for sub-systems within the vehicle. The re-entry body contains the warhead, the fuse, the arming mechanism, the safety mechanism, and the re-entry guidance equipment. In some respects the solid-propellant vehicle is simpler than its liquid-propellant counterpart.