Early Systems
The first use of an IRST system appears to be the F-101 Voodoo and F-102 Delta Dagger interceptors. The Swedish Saab J-35F Draken (1965) also used an IRST, a Hughes Aircraft Company N71. The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II had a housing for an IRST, but this was never installed.
These were fairly simple systems consisting of an infra-red sensor with a horizontally rotating shutter in front of it. The shutter was slaved to a display under the main interception radar display in the cockpit, any IR light falling on the sensor would generate a "pip" on the display, in a fashion similar to the B - scopes used on early radars.
The display was primarily intended to allow the radar operator to manually turn the radar to the approximate angle of the target, in an era when radar systems had to be "locked on" by hand. The system was considered to be of limited utility, and with the introduction of more automated radars they disappeared from fighter designs for some time.
Read more about this topic: Infra-red Search And Track
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or systems:
“Everyone in our culture wants to win a prize. Perhaps that is the grand lesson we have taken with us from kindergarten in the age of perversions of Dewey-style education: everyone gets a ribbon, and praise becomes a meaningless narcotic to soothe egoistic distemper.”
—Gerald Early (b. 1952)
“What avails it that you are a Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)