TI demonstrates laser guidance system for bombs

In 1964, at the urging of Tom Weaver, a missile engineer, TI submitted a proposal and received $100,000 from the U.S. Army Missile Command to study the feasibility of adapting an earlier guidance system for a laser-guided artillery shell. TI was convinced laser guidance was viable, but the Army program bogged down, and the company’s engineers, directed by Weldon Word, began searching for someone in defense who might be interested in developing new technology. TI had the knowledge and expertise, but the company needed a new project, or, Word feared, the Missile Guidance and Tracking team might be dissolved.

During the 1960s, the Air Force owned the skies above Vietnam, but, more often than not, its superior air power was going to waste. Bombs were raining over Southeast Asian jungles, but critical targets were still intact when calm returned to the battlefield. In 1964, Colonel Joe Davis from the Air Force Armament Test Center met with Word and showed him tactical photos of a bridge surrounded by more than 800 pockmarks in the ground—ragged holes left by exploding bombs. The bridge, critical to the flow of Viet Cong supplies heading north, was unscathed. Colonel Davis said, “We have a bombing problem, and there may be some money available if you think you can fix it.”

Word immediately thought the military might be willing to spend at least $70,000 on a laser-guided missile study, a project that would allow him to keep his team together. His solution for reducing the Air Force’s large margin of error was using a new technology to guide a bomb to a target with a laser beam. His goal was “one bomb for one target.”

Glenn Penisten, head of TI’s missile and ordnance business, scheduled a Friday afternoon appointment with the customer to discuss the potential of laser-guided bombs. After 15 minutes, the customer stood up, closed his windows, and walked out the door without another word. He went home and left Penisten staring at an empty room. His official duty for the day had ended.

Penisten angrily called Colonel Joe Davis. He didn’t appreciate being treated that way, especially not when TI was working on the colonel’s own bombing concerns. Davis told him, “If you have me a proposal by Monday morning, and you can build a dozen laser-guided bombs in less than six months, and the cost to the Air Force is less than $100,000, then I’ll find the money.”

Penisten was aggressive in marketing, and, as Word remembered, “Glenn never backed away from any challenge. For him, it was always full speed ahead. He never saw an opportunity he didn’t believe he could make real. He knew how to keep customers happy and the train on the track. He figured it was up to the engineers to put the train on the track.”

Before 7 a.m. on Monday, Word placed an 18-page, handwritten proposal for $99,000 on the colonel’s desk.

Word recalled, “Unfortunately, a marketer and an electrical engineer doing aerodynamics work over the weekend delivered a prescription for disaster. We knew what we wanted. We had no idea how to realistically do it.”

Jack Sickle, a TIer and retired Navy test pilot, told his associates at TI to keep the design of the laser-guided system simple, user-friendly, and completely disconnected from the aircraft. He explained, “It’s important for the Air Force to be able to slap one of the missiles on any plane that has a bomb rack.”

Dick Johnson, regarded as one of the country’s premier aeronautical engineers, returned from an international soaring competition in Yugoslavia and began retooling the proposal Word and Penisten had developed. While evaluating various ideas on an analog computer, he began defining ways for TI to place a guidance system on a missile with fins. Johnson, along with engineer Ron Hirsch, devised a unique floating head, a so-called “birdie head,” to house the seeker. Their approach enabled the bomb to stay fixed on the laser-designated spot without the use of stabilization gyros or input from the launch craft. The birdie head directed the bomb precisely toward its target.

The seeker was simple. It was low cost. And it gave TI the potential of providing the Air Force with test hardware in a mere 60 days after receiving the $99,000 study contract.

Because of the tight, 60-day deadline, however, Johnson did not have time to conduct full up-wind tunnel modeling, so he improvised, using his own lathe to machine a one-sixteenth-inch scale model of the precision-guided bombs. He then dropped them in a swimming pool to establish critical centers of pressure.

At the same time, Bob Wagner, a missile engineer, was working on a laser guidance system that, he figured, would require a material capable of generating a pulse length of ten nanoseconds at the most. In the lab, germanium proved to be acceptable at room temperatures, but it was of no value when placed aboard an aircraft cruising twenty-five thousand feet above the ground at a temperature of minus forty degrees.

A transistor device of ultra-pure silicon was the answer. Again, TI’s leadership in silicon materials and semiconductors would make the difference, but not without a battle against military tradition.

As Word remembered, “The Air Force was still operating with a WWII mentality. The effectiveness of a bombing run was measured in how many tons of bombs were dropped.”

Colonel Davis, however, fully understood that technological changes needed to be made in the way air warfare was conducted, and he managed to provide TI with some 750-pound bomb bodies, arranging for the company to test its guidance system on the Eglin range. The Air Force laughed when it first saw TI’s birdie head. They thought it looked like a toy. The tests, however, were as successful as TI engineers believed they would be, and they pressed management to pursue the laser guidance business.

Unfortunately, for TI, the Air Force was already committed to the 3,000-pound TV-guided bomb being developed by a competitor, North American Aviation. TI’s idea was good, and it might even work. But the Air Force was moving forward with a bomb that could be directed remotely to the target by human eyes and hands.

Because of this commitment to alternate technology, management wanted to kill TI’s laser-guided program. While TI did offer the best technical solution for a laser-guided projectile, the company did not have the resources to support a project the customer did not support, especially when TI was already stretched so thin.

Penisten was in no mood to walk away, not without a fight anyway. He persuaded management to give him $50,000 to continue a low-level study of the laser-guided project.

In 1966, again with an assist from Colonel Davis, TI successfully tested its innovative guidance system on a 3,000-pound bomb. TI’s system made it feasible for an aircraft to fly over a target zone at 20,000 feet, roll in at a steep, 45 degree angle dive, and release its laser-guided bombs at 12,000 feet. Throughout the mission, the aircraft remained safely above enemy ground fire and once released, the laser-guided bomb headed for the target, making its own guidance corrections without any help from the pilot. Additionally, the Air Force could purchase TI’s laser-guided bombs for only $2,000 to $3,000 each. The Air Force’s solemn commitment to the $100,000 TV-guided bomb began to waver, then unravel altogether.

By 1969, the first guidance kits, designated as Paveway 1, were delivered to the Air Force and fitted to the MK-117 bombs. A year later, the Air Force significantly increased production rates for laser-guided bombs, and the Navy began purchasing the weapons as well. In 1977, TI created Paveway II for the Air Force by adding laser countermeasures to the bombs, and from 1967 to 1977, TI delivered 110,000 of the weapons, which generated hundreds of millions of dollars.