Tactical radar missile challenges

Abstract

The first air-to-air missiles were reportedly fired by the French during World War I. These Le Prieur missiles were unguided and used to destroy balloons from a range of 100 to 150 m [1]. The Americans developed a semi-active guided bomb called the BAT missile [2]. A few of these were converted to fully active missiles which saw service in 1944. In the authors' knowledge, this is the first active Radar Guided missile. It was used in an anti-ship role. The missile was designated with the aid of airborne Radar, it locked onto the target and once launched it was fully autonomous using its own Radar seeker for guidance. Since then many nations have been developing both Infra-red and Radar guided missiles. These missiles have been actively used primarily in regional conflicts e.g. Falklands war, Gulf war. Initially the infra-red missile has accounted for more kills than the Radar guided missile, but as the Radar missile capability improves, its success rate has rapidly improved. The last decade has seen a massive growth in electronic hardware capability; this includes FPGA's, memory and processing capability. This has opened the doors to new development in Radar guided missiles. Much more software processing can be done in a modern Radar Seeker. The requirement to integrate a radar seeker into a missile system is a challenge between demanding performance requirements, severe environmental conditions and physical and technological constraints. This paper addresses some of the critical requirements for a fully active Radar guided missile system.