The IBM AN/FSQ-7 Combat Direction Central (colloq. "Q7") was a computerized command and control system for Cold War ground-controlled interception used in the USAF Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) air defense network. The largest computer system ever built, each of the 24 centrals weighed 250 tons and had two computers. The AN/FSQ-7 used a total of 60,000 vacuum tubes (49,000 in the computers) and up to 3 megawatts of electricity, performing about 75,000 instructions per second for networking regional radars. The AN/FSQ-7 calculated one or more predicted interception points for assigning manned aircraft or CIM-10 Bomarc missiles to intercept an intruder using the Automatic Target and Battery Evaluation (ATABE) algorithm. Also used in the Nike AN/FSG-1 system, ATABE automated the "Whiz Wheel" (Felsenthal CPU-73 A/P Air Navigation Attack Computer) method used in manual command post operations.
The Q7 fire button launched the Bomarc, and an additional Q7 algorithm automatically directed the missile during climb and cruise to the beginning of "its supersonic dive on the target" when guidance transferred to "the missile seeker system" for the "homing dive". Later improvements allowed transmission of Q7 guidance to autopilots of manned fighters for vectoring to targets via the SAGE Ground to Air Data Link Subsystem (cf. bomber vectoring to a Bomb Release Point in 1965-73 Vietnam via vacuum-tube analog computers.)
Read more about IBM AN/FSQ-7 Combat Direction Central: History, Equipment
Famous quotes containing the words combat, direction and/or central:
“In case I conk out, this is provisionally what I have to do: I must clarify obscurities; I must make clearer definite ideas or dissociations. I must find a verbal formula to combat the rise of brutality—the principle of order versus the split atom.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“From cradle to grave this problem of running order through chaos, direction through space, discipline through freedom, unity through multiplicity, has always been, and must always be, the task of education, as it is the moral of religion, philosophy, science, art, politics and economy; but a boy’s will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“Incarnate devil in a talking snake,
The central plains of Asia in his garden,
In shaping-time the circle stung awake,
In shapes of sin forked out the bearded apple....”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)