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The boost phase is the portion of the flight of a ballistic missile or space vehicle during which the booster and sustainer engines operate until it reaches peak velocity. . This phase can take 3 to 4 minutes for a solid rocket (shorter for a liquid-propellant rocket), the altitude at the end of this phase is 150–200 km, and the typical burn-out speed is 7 k
The last phase in the missile's trajectory is the terminal or re-entry phase, beginning with the re-entry of the missile into the Earth's atmosphere (if exoatmospheric) [13] [14] where atmospheric drag plays a significant part in missile trajectory, and lasts until missile impact. [13]
In the field of weaponry, terminal guidance refers to any guidance system that is primarily or solely active during the "terminal phase", just before the weapon impacts its target. The term is generally used in reference to missile guidance systems, and specifically to missiles that use more than one guidance system through the missile's flight.
A ballistic missile is a missile that is guided only during the relatively brief initial phase of powered flight, with the trajectory subsequently governed by the laws of classical mechanics, in contrast to (for example) a cruise missile, which is aerodynamically guided in powered flight like a fixed-wing aircraft.
Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), formerly Theater High Altitude Area Defense, is an American anti-ballistic missile defense system designed to intercept and destroy short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in their terminal phase (descent or reentry).
Terminal ballistics is a sub-field of ballistics concerned with the behavior and effects of a projectile when it hits and transfers its energy to a target. Bullet design (as well as the velocity of impact) largely determines the effectiveness of penetration.
In World War II, guided missiles were first developed, as part of the German V-weapons program. [2] Project Pigeon was American behaviorist B.F. Skinner's attempt to develop a pigeon-guided bomb. The first U.S. ballistic missile with a highly accurate inertial guidance system was the short-range PGM-11 Redstone. [3]
Older western missiles tend to use pure semi-active radar homing. Pure command guidance is not normally used in modern surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems since it is too inaccurate during the terminal phase, when a missile is about to intercept a target. This is because the ground-based radars are distant from the target and the returned ...