nah, the warheads could be reused

PJ wrote:

Looks like a fine piece of equipment, but rumored to fail after the first
use.

Phil

-- If it's a "new economy," why do they want my obsolete old money?

"David Stinson" wrote in message
...
Trying to identify a vacuum tube based missle seeker head.



Can anyone ID this? The box said "NIKE AJAX."



"Nike Ajax" was one of the first anti-aircraft city defense systems ever.
It was ably designed by Bell labs to act like a short-range detection,
tracking, and interception system.

But if you do the math of coastlines vs radar vs missle range vs costs, you
quickly discover you'd need about 600 times the GNP of the USA to put up
enough of these to intercept 75% of the bombers. Oh, and they knew that
very soon the bombers would be obsoleted by ICBM's, which would completely
obsolete the whole Nike shebang.

Even in the free spending 1950's there was only enough spare $ to put up a
miniscule shield. Many of the Nike sites were put up in full view of major
public thoroughfares, to reassure the public that the US govt was on the
job!

When the Nike sites were tested against actual "attacking" bombers (ours),
the results were less than stupendous. No problem, the results were
classified.

To further boondoggle things, the Feds didnt want to run the sites, so they
somehow delegated the job to each state's National Guard. Mild
contradictions with the US Constitution, quickly fixed by a flurry of
individual "treaties" between the State Dept and the 50 states. Now you try
scheduling the part-time NG troops to man these sites 24/7 with any kind of
effectiveness.

My neighbor was a programmer on Nike-Ajax. IHRC they had a custom-designed
computer that tried to track targets in real-time. The computer had some
parallel-processing capability designed in by the Lab wizards. But the
programmers quickly found out that all that extra parallel hardware was
almost impossible to harness. (Much like the discoveries of later
generations!). So the computers couldnt keep up with a typical target mix,
much less with jamming or bad weather.

Count yourself lucky, you're one of the few people that have benefited from
Nike (the system, not the shoe) !

"George R. Gonzalez" ) writes:

Even in the free spending 1950's there was only enough spare $ to put up a
miniscule shield. Many of the Nike sites were put up in full view of major
public thoroughfares, to reassure the public that the US govt was on the
job!


Yes, I remember seeing one site just off a main street in
Detroit, MI. The site was surrounded by a high fence but
citizens (and visitors from Canada, like me) could easily see
the missiles sticking up above the fence. This was early '50s.

Just wonder if the second part of the name (Ajax, Hercules, etc)
refers to the booster rocket that the Nike was mounted on. I
recall that some upper atmospheric research rockets were mounted
on Ajax boosters.

.... Martin VE3OAT

"David Stinson" wrote in message
...
Trying to identify a vacuum tube based missle seeker head.



Can anyone ID this? The box said "NIKE AJAX."

Thanks,
Dave S.

Here's the tech manual:

CHAPTER 3. SIGNAL DATA CONVERTER CIRCUIT OPERATION
Pulse stretcher 18 20
Cathode follower driver 19 21
Filter unit 20 21
AGC amplifiers 21 22
P- and Y-discriminator 22 23
Command burst circuit 23 25
Fail-safe burst circuit 24 27
CHAPTER 4. CONTROL SECTION OPERATION

In article , "George R. Gonzalez"
wrote:

"David Stinson" wrote in message
...
Trying to identify a vacuum tube based missle seeker head.



Can anyone ID this? The box said "NIKE AJAX."

Thanks,
Dave S.

Here's the tech manual:

CHAPTER 3. SIGNAL DATA CONVERTER CIRCUIT OPERATION
Pulse stretcher 18 20
Cathode follower driver 19 21
Filter unit 20 21
AGC amplifiers 21 22
P- and Y-discriminator 22 23
Command burst circuit 23 25
Fail-safe burst circuit 24 27
CHAPTER 4. CONTROL SECTION OPERATION


Doesn't look like much of a manual, looks more like the table of contents
for one chapter.


Regards,

John Byrns


Surf my web pages at, http://users.rcn.com/jbyrns/

"John Byrns" wrote in message
...
In article , "George R. Gonzalez"


Doesn't look like much of a manual, looks more like the table of contents
for one chapter.


Regards,

John Byrns


Surf my web pages at, http://users.rcn.com/jbyrns/


oops, there should have been links in there...

Here's the link to the whole manual, scroll down a bit to get to your
stuff...


http://ed-thelen.org/tm9-5000-28.html



Regards,


George

"George R. Gonzalez" wrote:

Here's the link to the whole manual,

Thank you very much for your kindness!

"David Stinson" wrote in message
...
"George R. Gonzalez" wrote:

Here's the link to the whole manual,

Thank you very much for your kindness!

Hey, I didnt do the hard part, scanning and OCR'ing the manual!


I would love to see the actual schematics of this thingy.....

David Stinson wrote in message ...
Trying to identify a vacuum tube based missle seeker head.



Can anyone ID this? The box said "NIKE AJAX."
================================================
Dave:

The Nike Ajax was a "Command Guidance" anti-aircraft missle system.
The computer (analog computer) was ground based and the computer was
fed information from a Target Tracking Radar (TTR) and a Missle
Tracking Radar (MTR). The computer digested this information and sent
commands to the missle via the MTR beam. The TTR and MTR operated in
the X-band (the 9 to 10 GHz range). The advantage of Command Guidance
is that the computer could determine the optimum trajectory to fly
missle to the target.

What you have is the electronics that received the MTR signals,
decoded the missle commands, and sent them to the control surfaces of
the missle. I went through the Officers Basic course at Ft. Sill back
in 1961. I was trained on the Nike Hercules System as the Ajax was
being phased out at that time. We did spend some time studying the old
Ajax system as there were still a few Ajax sites active until the late
1960s. I saw quite a few Ajax missles being fired at the White Sands
missle range.

Lt. Ed Engelken
5th Msl Bn, 517th Arty
(My old Hercules Missle outfit)

Well of course it's a guidance system, silly! They could use just a pocket
radio for a receiver.
I wonder if the Nike Ajax used any gyros at all, if the radar guidance
uplink was continuous from launch.
I imagine The Military Masterminds would not have expected the 'Bears' to be
accompanied by radar suppressing 'Thuds': "Fishboobs".
Also, what kind of propellant/oxidant was used?
Also, was the uplink data stream encrypted?
What kind of warhead did the nike Ajax have?
Inquiring minds want to know.

David Stinson wrote in message
...
Trying to identify a vacuum tube based missle seeker head.



Can anyone ID this? The box said "NIKE AJAX."

Thanks,
Dave S.