13 comments

  1. Makes me remember when I was a 2LT back in the mid-1970s, I heard a SSG explaining (heh!) to a trainee what warrant officers did. The trainee thought WO's had a great job, but the SSG expained that they were really OBMM (On-Board Missile Mechanics). They would, the SSG said, hop on an ICBM to make sure it kept to the correct path and had no malfunctions on the way to the USSR, and parachute off as the missile was reaching its final approach. The trainee's eyes kept getting bigger and bigger, and my "don't laugh and screw this up" was being sorely tested. Again, heh!

  2. I still remember a junior high school trip through Rockwell guidance plant (the reason why my area is on Soviet nuclear targeting map). This is in the mid '80s and they're just phasing the 50-60 era inertia guidance gear with optical diffraction gears. Not sure what we're currently using in our current system now…

  3. When I said inertia guidance, I mean the old gear and spring version. The optical diffraction ones is the one with 3 brick of prism where laser is shined through on on facet, bounced through 2 mirrors inside the prism and you calculate the movement through the sensor on the third facet. the 3 prisms combined to take into account all 3 axis.

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