Fighter aircraft are fixed-wing military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of the battlespace. Domination of the airspace above a battlefield permits bombers and attack aircraft to engage in tactical and strategic bombing of enemy targets.
Anti-aircraft warfare, counter-air or air defence forces is the battlespace response to aerial warfare, defined by NATO as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action". It includes surface based, subsurface, and air-based weapon systems, associated sensor systems, command and control arrangements, and passive measures. It may be used to protect naval, ground, and air forces in any location. However, for most countries, the main effort has tended to be homeland defence. NATO refers to airborne air defence as counter-air and naval air defence as anti-aircraft warfare. Missile defence is an extension of air defence, as are initiatives to adapt air defence to the task of intercepting any projectile in flight.
Chain Home, or CH for short, was the codename for the ring of coastal Early Warning radar stations built by the Royal Air Force (RAF) before and during the Second World War to detect and track aircraft. Initially known as RDF, and given the official name Air Ministry Experimental Station Type 1 in 1940, the radar units themselves were also known as Chain Home for most of their life. Chain Home was the first early warning radar network in the world, and the first military radar system to reach operational status. Its effect on the outcome of the war made it one of the most powerful weapons of what is today known as the "Wizard War".
A head-up display, or heads-up display, also known as a HUD or Head-up Guidance System (HGS), is any transparent display that presents data without requiring users to look away from their usual viewpoints. The origin of the name stems from a pilot being able to view information with the head positioned "up" and looking forward, instead of angled down looking at lower instruments. A HUD also has the advantage that the pilot's eyes do not need to refocus to view the outside after looking at the optically nearer instruments.
The Norden Mk. XV, known as the Norden M series in U.S. Army service, is a bombsight that was used by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) and the United States Navy during World War II, and the United States Air Force in the Korean and the Vietnam Wars. It was an early tachometric design that directly measured the aircraft's ground speed and direction, which older bombsights could only estimate with lengthy manual procedures. The Norden further improved on older designs by using an analog computer that continuously recalculated the bomb's impact point based on changing flight conditions, and an autopilot that reacted quickly and accurately to changes in the wind or other effects.
Ground-controlled interception (GCI) is an air defence tactic whereby one or more radar stations or other observational stations are linked to a command communications centre which guides interceptor aircraft to an airborne target. This tactic was pioneered during World War I by the London Air Defence Area organization, which became the Royal Air Force's Dowding system in World War II, the first national-scale system. The Luftwaffe introduced similar systems during the war, but most other combatants did not suffer the same threat of air attack and did not develop complex systems like these until the Cold War era.
Gee-H, sometimes written G-H or GEE-H, was a radio navigation system developed by Britain during World War II to aid RAF Bomber Command. The name refers to the system's use of the earlier Gee equipment, as well as its use of the "H principle" or "twin-range principle" of location determination. Its official name was AMES Type 100.
A fire-control system (FCS) is a number of components working together, usually a gun data computer, a director and radar, which is designed to assist a ranged weapon system to target, track, and hit a target. It performs the same task as a human gunner firing a weapon, but attempts to do so faster and more accurately.
Gun laying is the process of aiming an artillery piece or turret, such as a gun, howitzer, or mortar, on land, in air, or at sea, against surface or aerial targets. It may be laying for direct fire, where the gun is aimed similarly to a rifle, or indirect fire, where firing data is calculated and applied to the sights. The term includes automated aiming using, for example, radar-derived target data and computer-controlled guns.
A gyro gunsight (G.G.S.) is a modification of the non-magnifying reflector sight in which target lead and bullet drop are calculated automatically. The first examples were developed in Britain just before the Second World War for use during aerial combat, and more advanced models were common on Allied aircraft by the end of the war.
A bombsight is a device used by military aircraft to drop bombs accurately. Bombsights, a feature of combat aircraft since World War I, were first found on purpose-designed bomber aircraft and then moved to fighter-bombers and modern tactical aircraft as those aircraft took up the brunt of the bombing role.
A radar display is an electronic device that presents radar data to the operator. The radar system transmits pulses or continuous waves of electromagnetic radiation, a small portion of which backscatter off targets and return to the radar system. The receiver converts all received electromagnetic radiation into a continuous electronic analog signal of varying voltage that can be converted then to a screen display.
The Thanh Hóa Bridge, spanning the Song Ma river, is situated 3 miles (4.8 km) northeast of Thanh Hóa, the capital of Thanh Hóa Province in Vietnam. The Vietnamese gave it the nickname Hàm Rồng. In 1965 during the Vietnam War, it was the objective of many attacks by US Air Force and US Navy aircraft which would fail to destroy the bridge until 1972, even after hundreds of attacks. The bridge was restored in 1973. As of 2016, the bridge still stands.
The Stabilised Automatic Bomb Sight (SABS) was a Royal Air Force bombsight used in small numbers during World War II. The system worked along similar tachometric principles as the more famous Norden bombsight, but was somewhat simpler, lacking the Norden's autopilot feature.
The Mark XIV Bomb Sight was a bombsight developed by Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command during the Second World War. It was also known as the Blackett sight after its primary inventor, P. M. S. Blackett. Production of a slightly modified version was also undertaken in the United States as the Sperry T-1, which was interchangeable with the UK-built version. It was the RAF's standard bombsight for the second half of the war.
A reflector sight or reflex sight is an optical sight that allows the user to look through a partially reflecting glass element and see an illuminated projection of an aiming point or some other image superimposed on the field of view. These sights work on the simple optical principle that anything at the focus of a lens or curved mirror will appear to be sitting in front of the viewer at infinity. Reflector sights employ some sort of "reflector" to allow the viewer to see the infinity image and the field of view at the same time, either by bouncing the image created by lens off a slanted glass plate, or by using a mostly clear curved glass reflector that images the reticle while the viewer looks through the reflector. Since the reticle is at infinity it stays in alignment with the device to which the sight is attached regardless of the viewer's eye position, removing most of the parallax and other sighting errors found in simple sighting devices.
The Course Setting Bomb Sight (CSBS) is the canonical vector bombsight, the first practical system for properly accounting for the effects of wind when dropping bombs. It is also widely referred to as the Wimperis sight after its inventor, Harry Wimperis.
AIRPASS was a British airborne interception radar and fire-control radar system developed by Ferranti. It was the world's first airborne monopulse radar system and fed data to the world's first head-up display. The name is an acronym for "Airborne Interception Radar and Pilot's Attack Sight System". In the Royal Air Force (RAF) it was given the official name Radar, Airborne Interception, Mark 23, normally shortened to AI.23. AIRPASS was used on the English Electric Lightning throughout its lifetime.
Radar, Air-to-Surface Vessel, Mark III, or ASV Mk. III for short, was a surface search radar system used by RAF Coastal Command during World War II. It was a slightly modified version of the H2S radar used by RAF Bomber Command, with minor changes to the antenna to make it more useful for the anti-submarine role. It was Coastal Command's primary radar from the spring of 1943 until the end of the war. Several improved versions were introduced, notably the ASV Mark VI, which replaced most Mk. IIIs from 1944 and ASV Mark VII radar, which saw only limited use until the post-war era.
The AMES Type 7, also known as the Final GCI, was a ground-based radar system introduced during World War II by the Royal Air Force (RAF). The Type 7 was the first truly modern radar used by the Allies, providing a 360 degree view of the airspace around the station out to a distance of about 90 miles (140 km). It allowed fighter interceptions to be plotted directly from the radar display, a concept known as ground controlled intercept, or GCI.
