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Sort of off topic but the war in Ukraine has brought to my attention that we actually fire missiles with giant miles-long extension cords. Missiles. With extens
by encoderer 4y ago
Sort of off topic but the war in Ukraine has brought to my attention that we actually fire missiles with giant miles-long extension cords. Missiles. With extension cords.
- sidewndr46 4y agoI think those are just for control & telemetry. The actual missile has a battery on it usually.
- mjevans 4y agoHardlines sound much harder to hack, except literally. Which brings chain-shot (I think they did this in cannons at some point) back to mind.
- hnlmorg 4y agoAnyone got a source for this? I’d be interested to learn more
- modeless 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire-guided_missile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire-guided_missile I think the TOW missile is the most prominent example.
- adwww 4y agoMILAN is very slightly older and probably just as widely used - especially out of US.
- nuccy 4y agoThose are wire-guided missiles, usually used to destroy tanks and other armed vehicles. The length of the wire is just few kilometers. The wire is needed to actually tell the rocket where to steer [1]. More modern approach to anti-tank missiles are those with lasers being used for highlighting the target [2], while the missile has a battery and a camera to find the spot. The other approach is to do on-the-fly image recognition [3]. Edit: interesting fact: DART space craft sent by NASA to hit an asteroid used a missile derived technology to recognize the image and steer itself into the target, since direct control from Earth was not possible due to communication lag [4] (also try googling "dart mission" to see google's doodle on the topic). 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire-guided_missile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire-guided_missile 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser-guided_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser-guided_bomb 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGM-148_Javelin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGM-148_Javelin 4. https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-dart-mission-impact-changed-asteroid-s-motion-in-space https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-dart-missio...
- macintux 4y ago> The length of the wire is just few kilometers. “just”
- stavros 4y agoWait, what? Why?
- NwtnsMthd 4y ago- Can't be jammed - Simple - No radio frequency indication of an incoming missile. There must be other reasons as well.
- stavros 4y agoI agree with the first and last point, but reliably unrolling a 4km wire while going 500 kmh cannot be simple.
- MarkMarine 4y agoThey seem to work quite effectively, I've never seen a TOW fail. Downside is you need to maintain visual guidance of the missile through it's whole flight path.
- stavros 4y agoWhile I don't doubt you, I will say that, technically, I've never seen a TOW fail either.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y agoI'm envision that classic "look down and see a pile of rope unspooling around your leg right before you disappear out of frame" shtick.
- supergeek 4y agoAnyone involved in RC aircraft will gladly tell you that getting a stable radio link for video and control past 4km is anything but simple. Even a basic analog video signal is orders of magnitude more data than what you'd be transmitting in a phone call.
- 4y ago
- jedc 4y agoAlso torpedos (for example, from submarines)
- nuccy 4y agoNever heard about wire-controlled torpedoes before, but indeed this makes total sense. Radio waves don't travel far in water. There are quite some spectacular systems built to contact submarines underwater [1] operating in 3-300Hz radio frequencies but antennas are kilometers long consuming megawatts. Wired-controlled torpedoes would be able to easily get target guidance from the submarine. Since torpedoes don't move fast (unlike missiles) un-spooling and long distance wires should not be a problem (wires can have neutral buoyancy). 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarines
- 2rsf 4y agoThe key words are "still being used", wire guided missiles are actually an old technology. Israel suffered from Russian Saggers fired by Egyptians in 1972, a missile produced in 1963 and it wasn't the first.
- Sakos 4y agoI always wonder what happens to the wire afterwards.
- pifm_guy 4y agoI assume the wire is very very thin to keep it light. That means it probably breaks down in the environment after a few years - with the time mostly depending on what type of enamel it's coated in.