Detection, Observation, and Fire Control Systems
Detection, Observation, and Fire Control Systems.Hitting a distant moving target requires observing its range and bearing, estimating its speed and direction, extrapolating into the future to compute the lead, and then calculating ballistics (that is, how to set a gun with the proper angle and elevation to hit a target at a particular range and bearing). Before the twentieth century, gunners performed these tasks manually or aided by small instruments, observing with optical telescopes and rangefinders, looking up ballistics in firing tables, and setting guns by hand. Beginning around World War I, however, these operations became progressively automated and combined into specialized fire control systems. The apparatus integrated target detection and tracking, ballistics calculation, and gun command into a connected set of machines. For much of the twentieth century, fire control ranked among the most secret and delicate technologies in the American...
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