Winglets are arranged at the tail of the warhead, which is very common in air defense missiles, because the flight trajectory needs to be adjusted according to the position of the target aircraft. Ballistic missiles' trajectories are mostly calculated before launch, and there is no need to adjust the flight trajectory after the warhead re-enters the atmosphere, so ballistic missiles generally do not have a small wing that acts as a pneumatic control rudder.
In order to improve the strike accuracy of Pershing-2 missile, the terminal radar scene matching guidance mode is designed. After the warhead re-enters the atmosphere, it will adjust the warhead to fly to the target according to the target scene detected by the radar on the missile. Therefore, it designed four delta wing air rudders at the tail of the warhead.
The four wings are made of aluminum structures covered with thermal insulation materials and powered by gas turbines. The wing of the missile is installed at the tail of the warhead, and the deflection angle can reach 20, so that the axial direction of the warhead forms an attack angle of 25 with the high-speed airflow, generating a lift force of up to 25g, and making rapid maneuvers to guide the seeker to fly to the target according to the radar scene.
At present, this technology has been mastered by more and more countries. For example, Iran's high-profile "carrier killer"-"Persian Gulf" missile also adopted this technology. There are four truncated right-angled triangular tails in the tail, and four small right-angled triangular wings are added to the warhead neck. Seen from the outside, it is a fixed wing, which is set at an angle of 45 with the direction of the tail wing.
The most special thing is that four triangular air rudders are designed at the front ends of the four tails of the missile. The design of wings and air rudders is not available in the previous "Mushak" and early "Conqueror" series. It can be seen from the setting of rudder that this type of missile has complete flight control capability. Because the trajectory of a missile with a range of 300 kilometers, such as the Persian Gulf missile, is basically in the atmosphere, the four air rudders located at the tail of the missile are very important for its flight stability and strike accuracy.
Although its area is small, it can effectively control the flight of missiles because of its high flight speed. The position of the air rudder is far from the center of mass of the missile, which makes the attitude control response of the missile not very fast, but the cooperation with the guidance system can make it adjust the flight state more accurately and strike more accurately.
The Soleimani missile recently announced by Iran, named after its former national leader, has a range of 1400 km. According to the pictures released by Iran, there is an obvious boundary between warheads, which obviously has the ability to separate the head from the body. Four triangular air rudders are designed longitudinally at the tail of the warhead.
This undoubtedly makes it have a certain terminal precision guidance ability, and it can accurately hit the target even within the range of 1400 km, which undoubtedly increases Iran's threat to the US troops stationed in the Middle East. It can be seen that the little wings on the warhead can also make the missile "even more powerful".
Li Wensheng: Bachelor of Electronic Engineering, Master of Military Science, former senior engineer of a certain department of the General Staff Department, engaged in military intelligence and military strategy research, and participated in writing the Annual Report on International Arms Control and Disarmament of China Arms Control Institute and the Annual Report on Global Nuclear Situation Assessment of China Institute of International Studies for a long time.
He has published more than 400 academic and military popular science papers in more than 0 periodicals inside and outside the military 10, participated in writing many works such as Basic Information of Russian and Romanian New Military Affairs and American future combat systems, presided over or participated in many national and military scientific research projects, and won many military scientific and technological progress awards. He is an expert in nuclear strategy, the development and operational use of nuclear weapons, and also has in-depth research in air defense and anti-missile and conventional long-range operations.