How do guided missles work?
In: Physics
To give an example of a super simplistic way a radar guided missile could navigate, let’s walk through a hypothetical system.
In the guidance head of the missile, there are four identical radar antennae arranged in a square, and all four are emitting their radar pulses directly forward. When they receive the radar echo, they measure how far off center the target is.
If all four antenna determine that the signal is exactly the same distance from the center of their antenna, the target is directly in front of the missile. If the antenna in the upper right quadrant measures the echo closer to center than the others, that means that the missile is pointed towards the lower left of the target. The computer adjusts the fins on the missile to steer it up and to the left until the target is centered again.
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