1.
Hughes Aircraft Company
–
The Hughes Aircraft Company was a major American aerospace and defense contractor founded in 1932 by Howard Hughes in Glendale, California as a division of Hughes Tool Company. During World War II the company designed and built prototype aircraft at Hughes Airport. These included the famous Hughes H-4 Hercules, better known by the nickname for it, the Spruce Goose, the H-1 racer, D-2. At the start of the war Hughes Aircraft had only four full-time employees—by the end the number was 80,000. Hughes Aircraft was one of many aerospace and defense companies which flourished in Southern California during, by the summer of 1947 certain politicians had become concerned about Hughes alleged mismanagement of the Spruce Goose and the XF-11 photo reconnaissance plane project. They formed a committee to investigate Hughes which culminated in a much-followed Senate investigation. Despite a highly critical report, Hughes was cleared. In 1948 Hughes created a new division of the company, the Aerospace Group, two Hughes engineers, Simon Ramo and Dean Wooldridge, had new ideas on the packaging of electronics to make complete fire control systems. Their MA-1 system combined signals from the radar with a digital computer to automatically guide the interceptor aircraft into the proper position for firing missiles. At the same time other teams were working with the newly formed US Air Force on air-to-air missiles, delivering the AIM-4 Falcon, the MA-1/Falcon package, with several upgrades, was the primary interceptor weapon system of the USAF for many years, lasting into the 1980s. The company became TRW in 1965, another company and a major competitor to Hughes Aircraft. In 1951 Hughes Aircraft Co. built a plant in Tucson. By the end of year, the U. S. Air Force had purchased the property. This Tucson plant is still in operation under the ownership of Raytheon Co, Howard Hughes donated Hughes Aircraft to the newly formed Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1953 allegedly as a way of avoiding taxes on its huge income. Pat Hyland was hired as president and general manager of Hughes Aircraft, he would ultimately become company president. Under Hylands guidance, the Aerospace Group continued to diversify and become massively profitable, the company developed radar systems, electro-optical systems, the first working laser, aircraft computer systems, missile systems, ion-propulsion engines, and many other advanced technologies. The Electronic Properties Information Center of the United States was hosted at the Hughes Culver City library in the 1970s, EPIC published the multi-volume Handbook of Electronic Materials as public documents. Greg Jarvis and Ronald McNair, two of the astronauts on the last flight of the Space Shuttle Challenger, were Hughes alumni, Hughes Aircraft Ground Systems Group was located in Fullerton, California
2.
AIM-7 Sparrow
–
Sparrow and its derivatives were the Wests principal beyond visual range air-to-air missile from the late 1950s until the 1990s. It remains in service, although it is being phased out in aviation applications in favor of the more advanced AIM-120 AMRAAM, the Self-Defence Forces of Japan also employ the Sparrow missile, though it is being phased out and replaced by the Mitsubishi AAM-4. NATO pilots use the brevity code Fox One in radio communication to signal launch of a Semi-Active Radar Homing Missile such as the Sparrow. The Sparrow was used as the basis for a missile, the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow. Fired at low altitude and flying directly at its target though the lower atmosphere, with the retirement of the Sparrow in the air-to-air role, a new version of the Sea Sparrow was produced to address this concern, producing the much larger and more capable RIM-162 ESSM. The Sparrow emerged from a late-1940s United States Navy program to develop a rocket weapon for air-to-air use. In 1947 the Navy contracted Sperry to build a beam riding version of a standard 5-inch HVAR, the weapon was initially dubbed KAS-1, then AAM-2, and, from 1948 on, AAM-N-2. The airframe was developed by Douglas Aircraft Company, the diameter of the HVAR proved to be inadequate for the electronics, leading Douglas to expand the missiles airframe to 8-inch diameter. The prototype weapon began unpowered flight-tests in 1947, and made its first aerial interception in 1952, after a protracted development cycle the initial AAM-N-2 Sparrow entered limited operational service in 1954 with specially modified Skyknights all weather carrier night fighters. And in 1956, they were carried by the F3H-2M Demon, compared to the modern versions, the Sparrow I was more streamlined and featured a bullet-shaped airframe with a long pointed nose. Sparrow I was a limited and rather primitive weapon, the limitations of beam-riding guidance restricted the missile to attacks against targets flying a straight course and made it essentially useless against a maneuvering target. Only about 2,000 rounds were produced to this standard, as early as 1950 Douglas examined equipping the Sparrow with an active radar seeker, initially known as XAAM-N-2a Sparrow II, the original retroactively becoming Sparrow I. In 1952 it was given the new code AAM-N-3, the active radar made the Sparrow II a fire and forget weapon, allowing several to be fired at separate targets at the same time. By 1955 Douglas proposed going ahead with development, intending it to be the weapon for the F5D Skylancer interceptor. It was later selected, with controversy, to be the primary weapon for the Canadian Avro Arrow supersonic interceptor. For Canadian use and as a source for US missiles. The small size of the forebody and the K-band AN/APQ-64-radar limited performance. After considerable development and test firings in the U. S. and Canada, Canadair continued development until the Arrow was cancelled in 1959
3.
Air-to-air missile
–
An air-to-air missile is a missile fired from an aircraft for the purpose of destroying another aircraft. AAMs are typically powered by one or more rocket motors, usually solid fueled, ramjet engines, as used on the Meteor are emerging as propulsion that will enable future medium-range missiles to maintain higher average speed across their engagement envelope. Air-to-air missiles are broadly put in two groups, most use infrared guidance and are called heat-seeking missiles. In contrast, medium- or long-range missiles, which fall under the category of beyond visual range missiles, tend to rely upon radar guidance. Some modern ones use inertial guidance and/or mid-course updates to get the missile close enough to use an active homing sensor, the air-to-air missile grew out of the unguided air-to-air rockets used during the First World War. Le Prieur rockets were attached to the struts of biplanes and fired electrically, usually against observation balloons, by such early pilots as Albert Ball. Post-war research led the Royal Air Force to introduce Fairey Fireflash into service in 1955, the US Navy and US Air Force began equipping guided missiles in 1956, deploying the USAFs AIM-4 Falcon and the USNs AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-9 Sidewinder. The Soviet Air Force introduced its K-5 into service in 1957, as missile systems have continued to advance, modern air warfare consists almost entirely of missile firing. The use of Beyond Visual Range combat became so pervasive in the US that early F-4 variants were armed only with missiles in the 1960s. High casualty rates during the Vietnam War caused the US to reintroduce autocannons and traditional dogfighting tactics, in the Falklands War British Harriers, using AIM-9L missiles were able to defeat faster Argentinian opponents. Since the late 20th century all-aspect heat-seeking designs can lock-on to a target from angles, not just from behind. Other types rely on radar guidance, a conventional explosive blast warhead, fragmentation warhead, or continuous rod warhead is typically used in the attempt to disable or destroy the target aircraft. Warheads are typically detonated by a proximity fuze or by an impact if it scores a direct hit. Less commonly, nuclear warheads have been mounted on a number of air-to-air missile types although these are not known to have ever been used in combat. Guided missiles operate by detecting their target, and then homing in on the target on a collision course, although the missile may use radar or infra-red guidance to home on the target, the launching aircraft may detect and track the target before launch by other means. Radar guidance is used for medium- or long-range missiles, where the infra-red signature of the target would be too faint for an infra-red detector to track. There are three types of radar-guided missile – active, semi-active, and passive. Radar-guided missiles can be countered by rapid maneuvering, deploying chaff or using electronic counter-measures, active radar -guided missiles carry their own radar system to detect and track their target
4.
Hispanic and Latino Americans
–
Hispanic Americans and Latino Americans, are Americans who are descendants of the peoples of Spain, Portugal, or the Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking countries of Latin America. More generally, it includes all persons in the United States who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino, other U. S. government agencies have slightly different definitions of the term, including Brazilians and other Portuguese-speaking groups. The Census Bureau uses the terms Hispanic and Latino interchangeably, origin can be viewed as the ancestry, nationality group, lineage, or country of birth of the person or the persons parents or ancestors before their arrival in the United States. People who identify as Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino may be of any race, as the only specifically designated category of ethnicity in the United States, Hispanics form a pan-ethnicity incorporating a diversity of inter-related cultural and linguistic heritages. Most Hispanic Americans are of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Salvadoran, Dominican, Guatemalan, the predominant origin of regional Hispanic populations varies widely in different locations across the country. Hispanic Americans are the second fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States after Asian Americans, hispanic/Latinos overall are the second-largest ethnic group in the United States, after non-Hispanic Whites. Hispanics have lived within what is now the United States continuously since the founding of St. Augustine by the Spanish in 1565, after Native Americans, Hispanics are the oldest ethnic group to inhabit much of what is today the United States. Spain colonized large areas of what is today the American Southwest and West Coast, the terms Hispanic and Latino refer to an ethnicity, people of this group may be of any race. Hispanic people may share some commonalities in their language, culture, history, according to the Smithsonian Institution, the term Latino includes peoples with Portuguese roots, such as Brazilians, as well as those of Spanish-language origin. In the United States, many Hispanics and Latinos are of both European and Native American ancestry, others are wholly or predominately of European ancestry, or wholly or predominantly of Amerindian ancestry. Many Hispanics and Latinos from the Caribbean, as well as regions of Latin America where African slavery was widespread. The difference between the terms Hispanic and Latino is confusing to some, the U. S. Census Bureau equates the two terms and defines them as referring to anyone from Spain and the Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas. The term Latino has developed a number of definitions, one definition of Latino is a Latin male in the United States. This is the oldest and the definition used in the United States. This definition encompasses Spanish speakers from both Europe and the Americas, under this definition, immigrants from Spain and immigrants from Latin America are both Latino. This definition is consistent with the 21st-century usage by the U. S. Census Bureau and OMB, a later definition of Latino is as a condensed form of the term Latino-Americano, the Spanish word for Latin-American, or someone who comes from Latin America. Under this definition a Mexican American or Puerto Rican, for example, is both a Hispanic and a Latino, a Brazilian American is also a Latino by this definition, which includes those of Portuguese-speaking origin from Latin America. An immigrant from Spain, however, would be classified as Hispanic, while the U. S. Census Bureaus definition of Hispanic is limited to Spain and Spanish-speaking Latin America, other government agencies have slightly different definitions of the term
5.
Navy Electronics Laboratory
–
Its radio communications and sonar work was augmented with basic research in the propagation of electromagnetic energy in the atmosphere and of sound in the ocean. In November 1945, the Navy Radio and Sound Lab was renamed as Navy Electronics Laboratory, 80% of the Point Loma Military Reservation evolved into the Naval Electronics Laboratory Center at the end of World War II. In turn NELC was merged into the Naval Ocean Systems Center in 1977 and this eventually was merged into the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command in 1997. In the 1960s, NELC was tasked with 4C, Command, Control, Communications, as one of its first projects, NEL began building its Shipboard Antenna Model Range. The non-metallic arch of this supports a transmitting antenna which is positioned toward a brass model ship on a turntable. The ground plane under the arch simulates the electrical characteristics of the ocean and it also began conversion of a World War II mortar emplacement, Battery Whistler, into an Arctic Submarine Laboratory. Scientific exploration of the Arctic Basin, and particularly providing the capability to attack submarines in the Arctic under the ice canopy. That same summer, the USS Skate cruised from the Atlantic to the North Pole, NEL also plunged into the undersea environment, acquiring the Bathyscaphe Trieste and directing its 1960 dive over 35,000 feet down into the Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench near Guam. The observatory played a role in solar radio mapping, studies of environmental disturbances. Requirements for handling the vast amount of shipboard communications during the intensifying Vietnam War led to tasking for an internal message handling system. In response, the lab developed the Message Processing and Distribution System, the lab improved substantially on that system later and installed it aboard Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. The programming language dialect NELIAC was developed by and named after the lab, NELIAC was the brainchild of Harry Huskey, at the time Chairman of the ACM, who had a keen interest in porting applications in a machine-independent form. ALGOL58 gave NEL the framework for an implementation, and work commenced in 1958, many other versions existed for a variety of computers because the ease of portability and the rapid one-pass compile times. In 1967, as part of the general Navy laboratory re-organization, NEL became the Naval Command, Control, the name was never fully accepted, and in about six months it was changed to Naval Electronics Laboratory Center. In 1971, the Antisubmarine Forces Command and Control System and Naval Ocean Surveillance System were software projects under development at NELC using an IBM 360/65 computer. AFCCS was re-written in 1972 for the Honeywell 6050 computer after DoD contracted with Honeywell to supply computers for the Worldwide Military Command, SSC San Diego Historical Overview NEL-related photographs
6.
Airborne early warning and control
–
AEW&C units are also used to carry out surveillance, including over ground targets and frequently perform C2BM functions similar to an Air Traffic Controller given military command over other forces. Like a ground based radar, it can be detected by opposing forces, the system is used offensively to direct fighters to their target locations, and defensively, directing counterattacks on enemy forces, both air and ground. The designation airborne early warning was used for earlier similar aircraft, AWACS is the name of the specific system installed in the E-3 and Japanese Boeing E-767 AEW&C airframes, but is often used as a general synonym for AEW&C. Modern AEW&C systems can detect aircraft from up to 400 km away, one AEW&C aircraft flying at 9,000 m can cover an area of 312,000 km2. Three such aircraft in overlapping orbits can cover the whole of Central Europe, the intention was to cover the North West approaches where German long range Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor aircraft were threatening shipping. A Vickers Wellington bomber was fitted with an antenna array. It was tested for use against aerial targets and then for possible use against German E boats, another radar equipped Wellington with a different installation was used to direct Bristol Beaufighters toward Heinkel He 111s, which were air-launching V-1 flying bombs. In February 1944 the U. S. Navy ordered the development of a system that could be carried aloft in an aircraft under Project Cadillac. A prototype system was built and flown in August on a modified TBM Avenger torpedo bomber, tests proved successful, with the system being able to detect low flying formations at a range in excess of 100 miles. The U. S. Navy then ordered production of the TBM-3W, tBM-3Ws fitted with the AN/APS-20 radar entered service in March 1945, with some 36–40 eventually being constructed. The Lockheed WV and EC-121 Warning Star, which first flew in 1949 served widely with both the US Air Force and US Navy and provided the main AEW coverage for US forces during the Vietnam war. It was to remain operational until replaced with the E-3 AWACS, in 1958, the Soviet Tupolev Design Bureau was also ordered to design an AEW aircraft. After determining that the projected radar instrumentation wouldnt fit in a Tupolev Tu-95 or a Tupolev Tu-116 and this solved the problems with cooling and operator space that existed with the narrower Tu-95 and Tu-116 fuselage. To meet the range requirements, production examples were fitted with an air-to-air refueling probe. The resulting system, the Tupolev Tu-126, entered service in 1965 with the Soviet Air Forces, many countries have developed their own AEW&C systems, although the Boeing E-3 Sentry and Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye are the most common systems worldwide. The E-3 Sentry was built by the Boeing Defense and Space Group and was based on the Boeing 707-320 aircraft,65 E-3 were built and it is operated by the United States Air Force, NATO, the British Royal Air Force, France and controversially, Saudi Arabia. The specially designed Grumman E-2 Hawkeye entered service in 1965 and has operated by eight different nations. Over 168 have been produced so far and new versions continue to be developed making it the most widely used AEW system, for the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, the E-3 technology has been fitted into the Boeing E-767
