Heat-Seeking Missile Guidance

Australian Aviation, March, 1982

by Carlo Kopp
© 1982,  2005 Carlo Kopp

Of all the air to air weaponry developed in the latter half of the 20th century, the air to air
guided missile has probably had the greatest impact, affecting the design of weapon
systems, airframes, propulsion and often leading to a complete reassessment of combat
tactics.

Air to air missiles (AAMs) differ principally in guidance, the two broad groups being radar
guided and heat-seeking or infra-red (IR) missiles. Of the two categories, the second, by virtue
of it's simplicity and lower demands on launch aircraft complexity, has become the
numerically superior, arming high performance fighters like the F-15 or F-14 operated by
frontline air forces, yet also equipping vintage 1950's fighters, defending Third World
countries.

The initial deployment of heat seeking missiles began in the late 1950's, with the USAF
acquiring it's first AIM-4 Falcons and AIM-9 Sidewinders, however, it was not until the Viet-
Nam war that the AIM-9 saw widespread use. The weapon was not as successful as expected,
reliability was a particular problem, especially with the USN (repeated carrier launches and
recoveries - quote ''banging them on the deck after every flight''), but when the missile did work,
it was effective, which may be confirmed by a number of NVAF pilots who had the unique
experience of a 'Winder entering the tailpipe of their sturdy Mikoyan, resulting in it's subsequent
bisection.

Current versions of the AIM-9 are a vast improvement, though they are to be replaced by the end
of this decade by the ASRAAM - solid state electronics allow for higher reliability and enable
the guidance to be ''smarter'' in between discriminating targets and resisting jamming.

As their name implies, heat-seeking missiles home on to the hot areas of a target. The target will
usually both reflect and emit infra-red radiation, which propagates through the atmosphere,
losing it's intensity due to number of effects. This radiation is detected by the missile's seeker
head, which, if the conditions are right, will then provide the guidance with the relative position
of the target enabling the weapon to home in and destroy the target. In order to fully appreciate
the problems involved in creating an effective weapon of this kind, we must examine the
behaviour of infra-red radiation, the characteristics of an aircraft as a source of IR energy, the
manner in which this energy travels through the atmosphere and finally, how the missile seeker
processes it to gain information as to the target's position.

Infra-Red Radiation
The infra-red is a term used to describe a particular group of electromagnetic waves, those which
are longer than visible wavelengths and shorter than microwaves, numerically the band between
0.8 and 1000.0 micrometres. This means that infra-red radiation has very many properties similar
to visible light, it can be focussed or diffused, absorbed or reflected.

The reason why the IR is so important is that it may be closely associated with heat and it's
transfer from bodies. When we heat an object, or a volume of material, we are feeding energy
into it - at an atomic level this energy is in the form of crystal lattice vibrations (probably the best
way of visualizing the process is to picture an infinite lattice of tiny balls, each connected to it's
neighbours by a spring, imagine then what occurs if we tap one of the balls) every atom vibrating
about some equilibrium position in the lattice.

To make things more complicated, in the physical world, the amount of energy each atom can
transfer to it's neighbour is limited to an amount hf (h is Planck's constant and f is the frequency
of vibration) which leads to an interesting result - a heated body emits radiation throughout a
continuous band of wavelengths, the relative amplitudes (levels) of each wavelength depending
on the body's temperature.

Graph 1. illustrates this relationship. This means that every object radiates energy, the dominant
wavelengths depending on the temperature. As it turns out, objects at temperatures around and
below 1200 C radiate mainly in the infra-red band, e in the higher the temperature, the shorter
the dominant wavelengths. (note: IR radiation can also be generated by exciting a molecular gas,
as the frequencies at which the molecules rotate and vibrate fall into the IR band - this type of
radiation forms narrow bands in the spectrum -see TE Dec.1981, Lasers).

Sources of IR energy

The easiest answer to that question is - any warm or hot object- however, the subject deserves a
little more attention. The single greatest source of IR radiation is the sun, however only part of
this energy would be available to illuminate the Earth's surface, as large amounts are absorbed
and scattered in the atmosphere, particularly by clouds and moisture. The Earth's surface
becomes a secondary source of IR, as it is being bombarded both with visible and IR energy
from the sun and as a result, is being heated.

Any processes releasing heat also lead to the emission of IR. All heat engines ie the internal
combustion engine or jet turbines radiate IR from various parts of their structures and also
release hot exhaust gases. All warm blooded creatures emit IR.

As far as a guidance system is concerned, all IR radiation from sources other than the target is a
nuisance - background clutter which will lower detection ranges or even swamp the emissions of
the target. Fortunately most of the IR energy emitted by the Earth's surface falls into the vicinity
of 10 micrometres, whereas the Sun's radiation peaks in the visible band and reflected off the
Earth's surface would tend to swamp the region above 3 micrometres, hence leaving a window
around 4 micrometres. The sky itself reflects and scatters a certain amount of IR, though it's
intensity is lower than that of the Earth's surface.
Graph 1. Relative emitted power versus wavelength of emitted radiation for an ideal blackbody
radiator. These curves illustrate the relative amounts of IR energy emitted at various
wavelengths for varying temperatures, the dominant wavelengths can be seen as becoming
shorter with increasing temperatures. (Note: an ideal blackbody by definition radiates equally
well at all wavelengths, an aircraft tailpipe is close to a blackbody in a very limited range of
wavelengths).
Diagram 2. The Infra-red signature of a fighter aircraft. Here a likely target for a Sidewinder, a
MiG-23BM Flogger powered by a 25,000 lb R-29 afterburning turbofan.

The aircraft itself both reflects IR from the sun and emits IR from it's hot parts, particularly the
afterburner nozzle. The exhaust plume temperature curves illustrate sections through areas of
equal temperature, the upper half with lit afterburner, the lower on dry thrust. The lower
temperature (cca 100 deg) curves for the afterburning mode extend to a distance greater than 100
metres behind the aircraft. The plume of a turbojet on dry thrust is narrower and hotter than taht
for a turbofan, which mixes cool bypass air with the turbine exhaust gasses.

An Aircraft as a Source of IR
Modern military aircraft are, in spite of the efforts of their designers, abundant sources of IR
energy. The principal heat source is the propulsion, as jet engines have an efficiency far below
100%, a considerable amount of energy is thrown away, advertising the aircraft's position.

The most intense IR source in a jet aircraft is the tailpipe (afterburner off). The exhaust gas
temperature (EGT) of a typical turbojet, ie the J79, is around 950 deg C, newer engines like the
F100 have an EGT around 1300 deg C. The highest intensity is thus for wavelengths around 2 to
3 micrometres (for the physics oriented, the tailpipe is modelled as a blackbody, or rather
greybody radiator).

The exhaust gases leaving the tailpipe form a plume, as they expand and cool. On dry thrust, the
tailpipe is the strongest radiator, the plume being cooler, particularly in the instance of high
bypass ratio turbojets (F404) or turbofans (F100), where the turbine exhaust gases are mixed
with bypass air from the fan.

Plume shapes and temperatures vary with engines and operating conditions, diagram 2. illustrates
typical temperature curves for a turbofan.

Lighting the afterburner causes further radiation of IR, in fact the exhaust plume, around 2000
deg C, then dominates the aircraft's signature, being hotter and physically larger than the
tailypipe. (note: at speeds above 2.5M the plume radiance will decrease due to the decreased
overall engine pressure ratio).

Aside from tailpipe/plume emissions, the hot parts of the engine eg exterior of afterburner
nozzle, also radiate. High speed flight will heat the aircraft's skin and the engine will usually heat
up parts of the airframe .

A further source of emissions is reflected sunlight/IR, conventional paints apparently reflecting

around 60%, though the newer low IR greys (USN F-14, F-4, F-18 etc.) reflect around 5 to 15%.
A well polished canopy may also reflect enough energy for a lock-on.

From the practical point of view, the IR signature of an aircraft is impossible to eliminate, the
best one could ask for is a reduction. The use of turbofans reduces the overall EGT and where
possible, parts of the airframe may be used to shield the exhaust, as in the A-10, where the tail
surfaces screen off the relatively cool exhausts of the TF34s (note: the positioning of the engines
makes it impossible to gain a lock-on with a shoulder launched SAM, eg SA-7, until the aircraft
has covered a relatively large distance, assuming the aircraft passes over the launch site. ) The
use of low reflectance paints and flat canopies (helos) can be of some use.

Atmospheric Propagation of IR Radiation

The atmosphere basically affects IR energy in three different ways - absorption, scattering and
scintillation (for a more detailed treatment see TE Dec.1981, Lasers).
Photons of IR wavelengths are absorbed mainly by atmospheric carbon dioxide and water
molecules, fortunately for the militarist, this is a quantum physical effect and is confined to
particular bands in the IR, leaving transmission "windows".

The most important windows in the near IR are centred on 1.6 micrometres, 2.2 micrometres and
3.75 micrometres, the last being the widest at about 1 micrometre, at an altitude cca 5000 m and
low water vapour concentrations these allow for up to 95% transmittance at ranges cca 30km
(16.5 NMI). If the water vapour concentration increases, scattering becomes noticeable.
Scattering occurs when the wavelength of the IR is comparable in size with the scattering
particles. Clouds and fog contain droplets around 1 micrometre in size - this results in extremely
low transmission throughout most of the IR band.

On the other hand, rain droplets are much larger, with the seemingly surprising result that IR
transmission through rain is substantially better. Rain is liable to degrade the systems
performance, but still allow it to function (at 1.8km / 1 NMI transmittance for light rain is cca
90% and for heavy rain cca 65%).

Scintillation is caused by the same effect responsible for the blooming of laser beams, local
variations in the atmosphere's refractive index caused by variations in temperature (eg observable
flickering of distant images on a well heated bitumen road). This effect isn't particularly
important for guidance systems, as the apparent changes in the target's position get smaller and
smaller as the weapon approaches the target, once the angular size of the target becomes larger
than the size of the apparent changes in position, it can be neglected.

The effects of the atmosphere can be summarized as a lowering of the target's intensity over a
distance, and the introducing of small position errors at large distances. These two effects
basically serve to limit the maximum range at which a guidance system may detect, track and
lock on to a target.

The Heat-seeking Missile

The aircraft as an intrinsic source of IR energy and the reasonably good propagation of IR clearly
indicate the potential for relatively simple, accurate short range missile guidance. As the target
itself emits all the energy needed for detection and guidance the weapon may be fire-and-forget,
without the need for complex and cumbersome fire control and illuminating radar. As a
relatively simple system, the weapon may be smaller and lighter, it's fire-and-forget ability
makes it then ideal as a dogfight weapon, complementing cannon. This reflects in the widespread
use of such weapons, eg the AIM-9J/L with the F-16, the R.550 Magic/Mirage III/F1 or the
Israeli Rafael Shafrir used with virtually all IAF fighter aircraft, not to speak of the K-13A Atoll
or the AA-8 Aphid used by Warpac air forces.

A guided missile can be broken down into three systems, guidance and control, warhead and
propulsion, all fitted to an airframe. Propulsion is usually provided by a solid propellant rocket
with a burn time of the order of seconds, this is adequate for acceleration to speeds cca 3.5M.
The warhead is usually small in weapons of this class, as it is assumed the missile will detonate
either on the target or within it, warheads are commonly high explosive/fragmentation types .
Most weapons employ a combination of proximity and impact fusing.

The guidance and control systems of the missile occupy it's nose section, the guidance senses the
position of the target and issues commands to the servoes in the control section which then
actuate the control surfaces to achieve the desired flightpath correction. The vast majority of
operational IR guided missiles employ a canard control surface/tail stabiliser configuration, the
type of canard employed usually betraying the particular emphasis placed during design, eg the
stabilising fins fore of the canards on the R.550 serve to prevent stalling at high angles of attack.

The guidance system itself commonly consists of a window/filter assembly in the nose of the
weapon, this serves to select only particular wavelengths of IR, these then enter an optical
modulation system, a reticle or chopper, which enables a detector element to receive IR
emissions from the target, while rejecting clutter. The output from the detector is processed by
signal detection electronics which separate target position carrying information from the clutter
present, a computer then employs proportional navigation to generate guidance commands.

IR Optical Filters

An optical filter is a device, which, by some particular mechanism, allows the transmission of
some wavelengths, while suppressing others. The principal reason behind the use of filters in
guidance systems is the necessity to suppress background IR radiation, such as reflected solar
energy, or thermal radiation from the earth's surface and to enable the guidance to discriminate
between various parts of the target's signature, as it wouldn't be very helpful to have a $20,000
missile guide into a ten metre long afterburner plume and detonate without damaging the target.

Optical filters used in these applications fall into two broad groupings, absorption filters and
interference filters. Absorption filters are characterised by wide bandwidths (width of transmitted
band) and are usually employed to suppress large regions, typically sunlight. Interference filters
can be designed with extremely narrow bandwidths (less than 0.1 of the wavelength at the band
centre) and good transmittance, they have the further advantage of reflecting unwanted energy
instead of absorbing it.

The physical phenomenon exploited in this instance is interference, an effect which occurs when
we add a wave to it's own reflection. Consider a series of layers of transparent material, the
layers with alternating refractive indices. If we pass a light wave through these layers it will be
partly reflected at each interface between layers, alternate interfaces reflecting in and out of
phase. Now if the wavelength of the wave is four times longer than the thickness of the layers, an
interesting thing occurs namely the reflections from successive interfaces are all in phase,
leading to a very high reflectance for that wavelength. Filters employ layers of varying
thicknesses to achieve certain degrees of reflectance for particular wavelengths.

Precise filters employ up to a hundred layers, each must have a very accurately defined thickness
(for IR less than 1 micrometre), in order to meet the bandpassing specifications.

Optical Modulators
Probably the most complex individual mechanical assembly in a missile guidance system is it's
optical modulator or reticle. It performs two extremely important tasks, providing the system
with directional target information and suppressing background IR radiation, In principle, a
reticle is a IR transparent substrate with a particular pattern of opaque and transparent fields on
it's surface.

In operation the reticle is placed between the filter/optics and detector, it's motion relative to the
optics results in the chopping of the IR incident on the detector in such a fashion as to enable the
electronics processing the detector's output to separate information on the target's direction from
background images, typically sunlit clouds.

The subject of reticle design is quite complex, to make things more difficult, the military has had
most information on the subject classified, however the basic principles may be understood from
the following.

Diagram 3A illustrates a simple rotating reticle for background suppression. Consider the reticle
to be rotating at a constant rate, then visualise it passing over the image in it's field of view, The
chopping action will result in different detector outputs for the point target and for the cloud. The
pulses corresponding to the target (we assume the target is distant enough to be regarded as a
point source) may then be easily separated from the rippled pulse corresponding to the cloud by
electronic filtering (a narrow bandpass filter at the pulse frequency), thus enabling the required
discrimination between the target and cloud.
Diagram 3. Target discriminating and direction finding reticles.

1. Reticle A separates target information from background IR.

2. Reticle B enables the guidance to find the direction of the target.
3. The third reticle combines the functions of A and B

Actual reticles employ very fine patterns, usually with complex wavy or zig-zag fields.

Diagram 3B illustrates a reticle configured for the finding of the target's direction. Once again
consider a constant rate of rotation and pass it over the target. A pulse is generated during each
rotation of the reticle, however the instant in time when the pulse commences depends on the
angular position of the target. The time lag or lead of the pulses or phase carries the information
as to the target's angular position, this information can be extracted via simple electronic means
if we know the position of the reticle as it rotates, which is quite easily accomplished in practice.
The third reticle in diagram 3. combines the functions of reticles A and B, providing directional
information and background rejection. The upper half is comprised of opaque-transparent fan
shaped segments, the lower half is semitransparent with a transmittance equal to the average
transmittance of the upper half. When the segmented half passes over the target, the output will
contain a series of pulses and some varying output given by the back around, when the
semitransparent part passes over the -target the output corresponds to the average brightness of
the target and background. The output would resemble B, but with bursts of pulses instead of
individual pulses.

By electronically filtering out these bursts, we can separate target information from clutter, the
phase of the bursts yields the angular direction. The radial distance of the target can be found by
examining the amplitudes of the pulses, as the actual image of the target on the reticle is a circle
rather than a point. The width of the segments on the reticle is smaller than the circle's diameter,
if the circle is near the edge of the reticle a lot of light is passed through, if it is near the centre,
very little is passed, causing the observed variation in amplitude. Knowing the angular and radial
components of the target's direction, we can easily find the X and Y components with respect to
the missile's control axes, a computer can then find the required control deflection for target
interception. It may be apparent to many a reader that this system cannot provide target direction
information if the reticle axis (missile axis) is pointing directly at the target, actual operational
systems employ complicated mechanical systems for the rotation and nutation of the optics and
reticle to avoid this.

The reticle patterns employed are also quite complex and must be extremely accurate.

An alternate method of determining the target's direction would involve an array of detector
elements, however the electronics required to separate the target from clutter would be
substantially more complex.

[Editor's Note 2005: in the nearly quarter century since this was written we have seen Focal
Plane Array IR seekers displace the reticle based designs described in this article.]

IR Detectors

The detector is a device which converts IR energy into some electrical signal, which is then
processed by the missile's electronics. As a device, the detector comprises a piece of
semiconductor material (the photosensitive element), with antireflective and/or filter coatings
and a reflector, which increases sensitivity by reflecting any IR which may have passed through
the detector back into it.

The two principle types of detector element used are photoconductive and photovoltaic, the
former change their electrical resistance when illuminated, the latter generate an output voltage
on illumination. An in depth look at the mechanisms responsible for these effects exceeds the
scope of this treatment, but some understanding may be gained from the following look at solid
state physics.
One of the basic conclusions of quantum physics was the fact, that electrons orbiting an atom
may have only certain discrete energies, energies other than those corresponding to the given
orbits being forbidden. If we examine the electronic structure of a multielectron atom, we find
the electrons occupying the outermost orbits are the easiest to remove from the atom, by some
external force. If we then take a large number of these atoms and begin to move them together,
the orbits begin to interfere with each other with the result, that the previously sharply defined
energy levels begin to smear out leading the formation of energy bands rather than levels for
large numbers of atoms.

The uppermost two levels, the so called valence band and conduction band are of the most
interest. The electrical resistance of a material depends on the number of free electrons in the
material, the more free electrons, the lower the resistance. In terms of energy bands, an electron
must transition from the lower valence band to the upper conduction band before it can be
available for conduction as a free electron. The difference in energy between the two bands is
called the energy gap (Eg), an electron in the lower band must receive at least this amount of
energy to transition up and become free for conduction. One way in which this can happen is
when an electron absorbs a photon of radiation with an energy hf larger than Eg.

This is basically the effect used in a detector. The energy gap in the semiconductor materials
used is usually less than 1 electronvolt, which is close to the energy of IR photons with
wavelengths shorter than 10 micrometres. Photons which enter the detector collide with
electrons, enabling them to become free and alter the electrical properties of the detector.
However the detector must be cooled down to around -200 degrees C, as otherwise the thermal
energy of the vibrating atoms would free enough electrons to swamp the effects of the detected
IR. Cooling is provided either by a closed circuit low temperature refrigerator, Joule Thompson
gas expansion refrigerator or by a thermoelectric refrigerator (early AIM-9J), the lower the
temperature available, the higher the sensitivity of the detector.

The choice of a detector material depends on the required sensitivity at a given wavelength, that
is given by the temperature of the target. The majority of the materials used fall into Selenides,
Antimonides and Tellurides, typical IR sensitive materials being Mercury-Cadmium Telluride
(HgCdTe) or Indium Antimonide (InSb).

Early guidance systems were constrained by the lack of available detector materials to working
in the 2.5 micrometre band - as a result the weapons were easily confused by strong sunlight,
cloud edges or flares and were not effective if launched at a target head on, as they would rather
guide for the plume than the aircraft. Later systems operate in the more convenient 4 micrometre
band, which falls into a reasonable transmission window and a region where background IR is
fairly low.

New weapons such as the GD Stinger employ combined infra-red and ultraviolet band sensors
(POST seeker), this enables the seeker to discriminate between targets and countermeasures such
as flares, though it's ability to handle IR jamming systems such as flashing IR beacons (Cesium
lamps) could be questioned. (Further reading: Hudson R.D. - Infrared System Engineering, Dow
R. B.- Fundamentals of Advanced Missiles).
Heat seeking missile guidance is, after more than twenty five years of use, anything but obsolete.
New technology expands launch envelopes and extends ranges with each new generation. of
weapons. Some developments in electronics (consider the recent fabrication of 30 x 30 element
arrays of HgCdTe on single mounting chips) may lead to completely different configurations in
future weapons, the potential, for improvements is very large.
Diagram 4. Energy bands of a pure semiconductor.

1. cb- conduction band

2. Eg- energy gap
 3. vb- valence band

If an electron in the lower valence band absorbs a photon hf with an energy greater than the gap
Eg, it will transition to the upper conduction band and be available for electrical conduction.
Semiconductors sensitive to lower temperatures, such as Mercury-Cadmium Telluride, have
energy gaps around 0.2 electronvolts (eV), those sensitive in the near IR, such as Silicon, have
gaps around 1eV.

Pic.5. The AIM-9L Super Sidewinder is a very late model of the widespread Ford Aerospace
Sidewinder, which saw considerable use in the Viet-Nam war. The missile weighs in at 85 kg,
has a cruise velocity of Mach 2 and carries an 11.4 kg fragmentation warhead. The weapon has
an effective range around 20 km and has been launched from a variety of aircraft, including
USMC AH-1T Sea Cobra attack helos. The launch aircraft in this instance is a TF-18A combat
trainer. The F-18 is configured to carrry two AIM-9s for close-in combat, these are mounted on
wingtip launch rails., The F-18's integrated cockpit/fire control automatically conditions radar
and HUD modes for the selected weapon and features a number of auto-lock on modes,
including an off-boresight mode allowing the pilot to lock on to a target in a tight turn. Earlier
aircraft such as the F-4 featured systems like VTAS (Visual Target Acquisition System), where
the missile seekers were cued by a helmet mounted sight.