Introduc)on

to Missile Propulsion
 What is a Missile
•  A missile is a guided self-propelled system
–  as opposed to an unguided self-propelled Muni)on, referred to as a rocket
(although these too can also be guided).

•  Missiles have four system components:
–  targe@ng or missile guidance
–  flight system
–  engine
–  warhead

•  All known exis@ng missiles are designed to be propelled during powered
flight by chemical reac@ons inside a rocket engine, jet engine, or other
type of engine.

•  Non-self-propelled airborne explosive devices are generally referred to
as shells and usually have a shorter range than missiles.
 Types of Muni@ons
•  A powered, guided muni@on that travels through the air or
space known as a missile (or guided missile).

•  A powered, unguided muni)on is known as a rocket.

•  Unpowered muni@ons not fired from a gun are called
bombs whether guided or not; unpowered, guided
muni@ons are known as guided bombs or smart bombs.

•  Muni@ons that are fired from a gun are known as
projec,les whether guided or not. If explosive, they are
known more specifically as shells or mortar bombs.

•  Powered muni)ons that travel through water are called
torpedoes (an older usage includes fixed torpedoes, which
might today be called mines).

•  Hand grenades are not usually classed as missiles.

 Types of Missiles
•  Ballis)c Missile
Ø  Follows a ballis)c trajectory
Ø  Deliver one or more warheads on predetermined
target.

•  Cruise Missile
Ø  Remains in the atmosphere
Ø  Flies the major por@on of its flight path at approximately
constant speed.

 Ballis)c Missile
•  A ballis)c missile follows a ballis@c
trajectory
•  Deliver one or more warheads on a
predetermined target.
•  These weapons are only guided during
rela)vely brief periods of flight
–  most of their trajectory is unpowered, being
governed by gravity and air resistance if in
the atmosphere.
•  Shorter range ballis@c missiles stay within
the Earth's atmosphere,
•  while longer-ranged intercon@nental Minuteman-III MIRV launch sequence :
ballis@c missiles (ICBMs), are launched on a 1. The missile launches out of its silo by firing its 1st-stage boost

sub-orbital flight trajectory and spend most motor (A).

2. About 60 seconds aWer launch, the 1st stage drops off and the
of their flight out of the atmosphere 2nd-stage motor (B) ignites. The missile shroud (E) is ejected.
3. About 120 seconds aWer launch, the 3rd-stage motor (C) ignites
and separates from the 2nd stage.
4. About 180 seconds aWer launch, 3rd-stage thrust terminates
and the Post-Boost Vehicle (D) separates from the rocket.
5. The Post-Boost Vehicle maneuvers itself and prepares for re-
entry vehicle (RV) deployment.
6. The RVs, as well as decoys and chaff, are deployed.
7. The RVs (now armed) and chaff re-enter the atmosphere at high
speeds.
8. The nuclear warheads detonate.
 Cruise Missile
•  A cruise missile is a guided missile
•  Used against terrestrial targets
•  Remains in the atmosphere
•  Flies the major por@on of its flight path at
approximately constant speed. Tomahawk USA
•  Designed to deliver a large warhead over long
distances with high precision.
•  Modern cruise missiles are capable of travelling
at supersonic or high subsonic speeds
•  Self-naviga@ng,
•  Able to fly on a non-ballis@c trajectory
–  extremely low-al@tude trajectory (to evade
RADAR detec@on)

Perseus
supersonic mul@-role cruise missile
 Aerial Torpedo
•  The idea of an "aerial torpedo" was shown
in the British 1909 film The Airship
Destroyer, where flying torpedoes
controlled wirelessly are used to bring
down airships bombing London.

•  The Airship Destroyer was originally

released in 1909. It was re-released in
January 1915, during World War I, at a time Director W.R. Booth
when Britain was suffering aerial bombings
from Zeppelins. The film is an example of
invasion literature.

•  The airships were created using a mixture

of cutout animation and models.
 First Aerial Torpedo
•  In 1916, Lawrence Sperry built and patented
an "aerial torpedo",
–  the Hewid-Sperry Automa@c Airplane
–  a small biplane carrying a TNT charge
–  a Sperry autopilot and a barometric al@tude
control.

–  Inspired by these experiments, the United
States Army developed a similar flying bomb
called the Kedering Bug.

–  Germany had also flown trials with remote-
controlled aerial gliders (Torpedogleiter) built
by Siemens-Schuckert beginning in 1916.
• 
RAE Larynx
The Royal AircraW Establishment Larynx (from "Long
Range Gun with Lynx engine") was an early Bri@sh
pilotless aircraW, to be used as a guided an@-ship
weapon.
•  Started in September 1925, it was an early cruise
missile guided by an autopilot.
•  A small monoplane powered by a 200 hp Armstrong
Siddeley Lynx IV engine, it had a top speed of
200 mph (320 km/h); faster than contemporary
fighters.

•  It used autopilot principles developed by Professor
Archibald Low and already used in the Ruston
Proctor AT, a radio controlled biplane that was
intended to be used against German Zeppelin
bombers.
First test 20 July 1927. Launched from cordite-powered catapult fided
to the S class destroyer HMS Stronghold. Crashed into Bristol Channel.
Second test 1 September 1927. Thought to have flown 100 miles (160
km) and was then lost.
Third test 15 October 1927. 112 mile (180 km) flight, hit five miles
from target.
Two more launches in September and October 1928 from HMS Thanet,
another S class destroyer.
Two addi@onal launches May 1929. Launched from land, one overflew
target and other was successful.
 Soviet GRID-06 Project
•  The Moscow-based Group for the Study of
Reac)ve Mo)on was a Soviet research
bureau founded in 1931 to study various
aspects of rocketry
•  Sergei Korolev headed the GIRD-06 cruise
missile project from 1932 to 1939, which
used a rocket-powered boost-glide bomb
design.
•  The 06/III (RP-216) and 06/IV (RP-212)
contained gyroscopic guidance systems.
•  The vehicle was designed to boost to
28 km al@tude and glide a distance of
280 km, but test flights in 1934 and 1936
only reached an al@tude of 500 meters.
 V1 “Buzz Bomb”
•  In 1944, Germany deployed the first opera@onal cruise
missiles in World War II.
•  The V-1, oWen called a flying bomb, contained a
gyroscope guidance system and was propelled by a
simple pulsejet engine, the sound of which gave it the
nickname of "buzz bomb" or "doodlebug".
–  Accuracy was sufficient only for use against very large targets
(the general area of a city), while the range of 250 km was
significantly lower than that of a bomber carrying the same
payload.
–  The main advantages were speed (while not sufficient to
outperform contemporary interceptors) and expendability.
–  The produc@on cost of a V-1 was only a small frac@on of that of
a V-2 supersonic ballis@c missile, carrying a similar-sized
warhead.
–  Unlike the V-2, however, the ini@al deployments of the V-1
required sta@onary launch ramps which were suscep@ble to
bombardment.
•  Bomber-launched variants of the V-1 saw limited
opera@onal service near the end of the war, with the
pioneering V-1's design reverse-engineered by the
Americans as the Republic-Ford JB-2 cruise missile.
–  Postwar, the JB-2 played a significant role in the development
of more advanced surface-to-surface tac@cal missile systems
such as the MGM-1 Matador and later MGM-13 Mace.
first opera)onal surface-to-surface cruise missile of USA
 USA
•  Immediately aWer the war the United States
Air Force had 21 different guided missile
projects, including would-be cruise missiles.
•  All but four were cancelled by 1948,
–  the Air Materiel Command BANSHEE (Drone)
–  the SM-62 Snark,
–  the SM-64 Navaho, Radio controlled
pilotless aircraQ with intercon@nental range ground-
explosives launched cruise missile
–  the MGM-1 Matador.
first opera@onal surface-to-surface cruise
missile designed and built by the United
States
supersonic
powered by a small
intercon@nental turbojet engine
cruise missile, Rocket
engine
 Supersonic Low Al)tude
Missile (SLAM)
•  The Supersonic Low Al)tude Missile or SLAM was a U.S. Air
Force nuclear weapons project conceived around 1955, and
cancelled in 1964.
•  SLAMs were conceived of as unmanned nuclear-powered ramjets
capable of delivering thermonuclear warheads deep into enemy
territory.
–  The development of ICBMs in the 1950s rendered the concept of
SLAMs obsolete.
–  Advances in defensive ground radar also made the stratagem of low-
al@tude evasion ineffec@ve.
•  Although it never proceeded beyond the ini@al design and tes@ng
phase before being declared obsolete, the design contained
several radical innova@ons as a nuclear delivery system.
 SLAM
•  The primary innova@on was the engine of the aircraW,
which was developed under Project Pluto.
•  It was a ramjet that used nuclear fission to superheat
incoming air instead of chemical fuel.
•  Project Pluto produced two working prototypes of this
engine, the Tory-IIA and the Tory-IIC, which were
successfully tested in the Nevada desert.
–  Special ceramics had to be developed to meet the stringent
weight and tremendous heat tolerances demanded of the
SLAM's reactor.
–  The reactor itself was designed at the Lawrence Radia@on
Laboratory.
•  Although a prototype of the airframe was never The reactor had outer diameter of 1.454 m and length 1.632 m;
constructed, the SLAM was to be a wingless, fin-guided the reactor core were 1.2 m diameter and 1.288 m length. The
cri@cal mass of uranium was 59.90 kg, and the reactor's power
aircraW; its appearance giving it the nickname "Flying density averaged at 10 megawads per cubic foot (350 MW/
Crowbar". m3), with total power of 600 megawads.
•  Apart from the ram-air intake it was very much in keeping
with tradi@onal missile design.
The reactors were successfully tested at Jackass Flats of the
•  Its es)mated airspeed at 30,000 feet (9,100 m) was Nevada Test Site. The Tory II-A reactor, the scaled-down
Mach 4.2. variant, was tested in mid-1961 and successfully ran for several
seconds on May 14, 1961. A full-scale variant, the Tory II-C, was
•  The SLAM program was scrapped on July 1, 1964. run for almost 5 minutes at full power. The lader test, limited
–  By this @me serious ques@ons about its viability had been by the air storage facility capacity, ran for 292 seconds. The air
raised, such as how to test a device that would emit copious fed to the reactor was preheated to 943 °F (506 °C) and
amounts of radioac@ve exhaust from its unshielded reactor compressed to 316 psi (2.18 MPa), to simulate ramjet flight
core in flight, as well as its efficacy and cost. condi@ons.
 General Design of Cruise Missiles
•  Cruise missiles generally consist of
–  guidance system
–  payload
–  aircraW propulsion system
–  housed in an airframe with small wings and empennage
for flight control.
•  Payloads usually consist of a conven@onal warhead or
a nuclear warhead
•  Cruise missiles tend to be propelled by a jet engine,
turbofan engines being preferred due to their greater
efficiency at low al@tude and subsonic speed.
 Categories of Cruise Missiles
•  Cruise missiles can be categorized speed
–  Subsonic
–  supersonic
–  Hypersonic
•  Based on Range
–  Intercon@nental Range
–  Long-range subsonic
–  Medium- range subsonic
–  Short-range subsonic
•  OWen versions of the same missile are produced for different launch plaqorms;
–  Air
–  Submarine
–  Land
–  ship-launched.
•  Guidance systems can vary across missiles.
•  Naviga@on systems
–  Iner@al naviga@on
–  Terrain Contour Matching (TERCOM)
–  satellite naviga@on.
•  Larger cruise missiles can carry either a conven@onal or a nuclear warhead, while smaller ones
carry only conven@onal warheads.
 Hypersonic Missiles
•  A hypersonic missile would travel at least Mach 5

BrahMos-II or BrahMos-2 or
BrahMos Mark II is a hypersonic
Kh-47M2 Kinzhal ALBM cruise missile currently under X-51 Waverider
joint development by Russia's
claimed range of more than and India, which have together
2,000 km (1,200 mi), Mach formed BrahMos Aerospace AWer two unsuccessful
10 speed Private Limited. test flights, the X-51
The BrahMos-II is expected to
completed a flight of
Kh-80 have a range of 450 kilometres
and a speed of Mach 7.
over six minutes and
During the cruise stage of flight reached speeds of over
the missile will be propelled by a Mach 5 for 210 seconds
scramjet airbreathing jet engine. on 1 May 2013 for the
It is expected to be ready for longest dura@on
tes@ng by 2020. powered hypersonic
flight.
 Supersonic Cruise Missiles
•  These missiles travel at supersonic speeds, usually using ramjet engines.
•  The range is typically 100–500 km, but can be greater.

BrahMos

The world's fastest cruise missile SSM-N-9 Regulus II

3M-54 Kalibr
First stage: solid fuel rocket booster 1x General Electric J79-GE-3 turbojet
Mul@-stage solid-fuel rocket, turbojet Second stage: liquid-fueled ramjet 1x Rocketdyne solid-fueled rocket
engine for 3M-54/E/TE/E1/TE1, -14/ 15,600 lbf (69 kN) + 135,000 lbf (600 kN)
Surface/Sea Plaqorm - 450 km To be
E/TE, solid fuel rocket for 91RE1/RTE2
upgraded to 600 km
1,000 nau@cal miles (1,852 km)
Air Plaqorm – 400 Km
0.8-2.5-2.9 Mach Flight ceiling 14 km (46,000 W)
Flight ceiling 59,000 feet (18,000 m)
On 7 October 2015, Russian Navy Speed M 2.0
Flight al@tude Sea skimming, as low as
corvedes, launched 26 Kalibr-NK 3–4 meters
system cruise missiles 3M14T from the Speed Mach 2.8–Mach 3 Air-Sol Moyenne Portée
Caspian Sea at 11 targets in Syria
during the Syrian Civil War Engine liquid-fuel ramjet
Opera@onal range
300 km (500+km
Used by Russia, Algeria, for ASMP-A version)
India, Vietnam, China Speed up to Mach 3

and Iran
Intercon@nental Range Cruise Missiles
Typically Rocket-Ramjet
Nuclear Ramjet

None of the programs con@nued

Given up in favour of ICBM’s

•  Burya (8,500 km) USSR

•  RSS-40 Buran (8,500) USSR
•  SLAM (182,00 km) United States
•  SM-62 Snark (10,200 km) United States
•  SM-64 Navaho (6,500 km) United States

 Long-Range Subsonic
•  The United States, Russia, United Kingdom,
Israel, South Korea, Turkey, Iran, China,
Pakistan and India have developed several
long-range subsonic cruise missiles.
•  These missiles have a range of over 1,000 km
and fly at about 800 kmph.
•  They typically have a launch weight of about
1,500 kilograms and can carry either a
conven@onal or a nuclear warhead.
 Nirbhay
•  A long range, all-weather, subsonic cruise missile designed and
developed in India by the DRDO.
•  The missile can be launched from mul@ple plaqorms and is
capable of carrying conven@onal and nuclear warheads.
•  Nirbhay is powered by a solid rocket booster for take off.
•  Upon reaching the required velocity and height, a Turbofan
engine in the missile takes over for further propulsion.
•  The missile has a length of 6 m, width of 0.52 m, a wing span of
2.7 m and weighs about 1500 kg.
•  It has a range of about 1000 km and is capable of delivering 24
different types of warheads depending on mission
requirements between 200-300kg.
•  The missile is claimed to have a loitering capability, i.e., it can GTRE is developing a new
go round a target and perform several manoeuvres and then
re-engage it. 4.25kN Thrust Turbofan
•  It is also able to pick out a target and adack it among mul@ple engine called Manik Engine to
targets. power Nirbhay Cruise missile
•  With two side wings, the missile is capable of flying at different
al@tudes ranging from 100 m to 4 km above the ground and and future UAV, Long range
can also fly at low al@tudes (like low tree level) to avoid cruise missile systems.
detec@on by enemy radar.
•  It will eventually supplement the role played by Brahmos
missile for the Indian Armed Forced by delivering warheads
farther than the 450 km range of Brahmos.
 Tomahawk
•  Long-range, all-weather, subsonic cruise missile
that is primarily used by the United States Navy
and Royal Navy in ship and submarine-based
land-adack opera@ons.
•  Introduced by General Dynamics in the 1970s, it
was ini@ally designed as a medium- to long-
range, low-al@tude missile that could be
launched from a surface plaqorm.
•  Since then, it has been upgraded several @mes
with guidance systems for precision naviga@on.

TH-dimer, also called Weight 1,300 kg, 1,600 kg with booster

tetrahydromethylcyclopentadiene dimer or Length
RJ-4, is a liquid rocket propellant used in Without booster: 5.56 m
missiles and jet engines. With booster: 6.25 m
The fuel is non-vola@le so it is safe to use on Diameter 0.52 m
ships or submarines. It has a high flash point
minimum of 60 °C. Engine Williams Interna)onal

Chemically, TH-dimer is a mixture of isomeric F107-WR-402 turbofan
saturated hydrocarbons derived from using TH-dimer fuel
hydrogena@on of the dimer of
methylcyclopentadiene. and a solid-fuel rocket booster
 Medium-range Subsonic
•  These missiles are about the same size and weight and fly at
similar speeds to the long-range missiles, but the range is
(officially) less than 1,000 km.

AGM-158 Joint Air-to- Storm Shadow/SCALP EG

Surface Standoff Missile EU and UK
Babur cruise missile; Ha] VII
Turbojet 3.0 kN Turbomeca Microturbo TRI
60-30 turbojet, producing 5.4 kN
thrust

Turbofan Unknown number ordered for

(Solid-fuel rocket booster during the Indian Air Force in 2016 as
launch)
part of the Dassault Rafale deal.
Teledyne CAE J402-CA-400
 Short-range subsonic
•  These are subsonic missiles which weigh around 500 kilograms and
have a range of up to 300 km

Apache (France)

YJ-83
Harpoon Chinese subsonic an@-
ship cruise missile
All-weather, over-the-horizon, an@-ship
air-launched an@-runway missile system.
cruise missile The missile system has also been further
developed into a land-strike weapon, the
Turbojet Standoff Land Adack Missile (SLAM).
The regular Harpoon uses ac@ve radar Kh-35
homing, and a low-level, sea-skimming cruise
trajectory to improve survivability and Russian turbojet subsonic
lethality. cruise an@-ship missile
Teledyne CAE J402 Turbojet/solid
propellant booster for surface and R95-300 Turbojet Kh-35 / Turbofan
submarine launch; greater than 600 pounds Kh-35U 360 kgf
(greater than 272.2 kg) of thrust
Propulsion Systems for Cruise Missiles
•  Pulse jet (V1)
•  Small Turbojet/ Turbofan (subsonic cruise)
•  Ramjet (Supersonic cruise)
•  Scramjet (Hypersonic)