James Rogers <jamesr@best.com> Wrote:
>these days balloon decoys primarily serve to generate an illusion for optical sensors.
And Radar sensors, the balloon's would certainly have an aluminum coating.
> The reason spherical decoys work is that from many aspects, the cone shaped
> warhead looks essentially identical to the spherical decoy to the optical
> sensor. Therefore, a sphere always takes on a theoretically valid profile
> of a real warhead, thereby serving its purpose.
Let me see if I understand this, from certain very specific directions a cone
can look like a sphere so really a sphere is more like a cone than a cone is
like a cone. You know, that really does sound like something a military man
would say, like the Vietnamese war general who said "We destroyed the
village to save it".
>A real warhead has a stable aspect with respect to its trajectory. With a
>cone-shaped decoy, a sensor can detect any rotation of the decoy that is
>inconsistent with a real warhead
If that bothers you then put the real warhead in a round balloon then you
won't know if it's spinning or not, it would greatly dilute the infrared signature too.
Do this and I'll withdraw my objection to round decoys, in fact I'd insist on them.
> In any case, the decoy was largely irrelevant to the test.
Ain't that the truth.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:39:50 MDT