Laser unit from Tornado jet fighter aircraft
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- Опубліковано 7 чер 2024
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Michel's videos :
Part 1 : • LDM #243: Panavia Torn...
Part 2 : • LDM #244: Panavia Torn...
Part 3 : • LDM #245: Panavia Torn...
Part 4 : • LDM #246: Laser Head L...
Parts 5 : • LDM #247: Laser Head L...
Part 6 : • LDM #248: Panavia Torn...
Part 7 : • LDM #249: Panavia Torn...
Optoelectronic systems book : books.google.co.uk/books/abou... - Наука та технологія
There's another one one Ebay UK now : www.ebay.co.uk/itm/393975746930
Surely this stuff is still illegal Mike
I didn't see a single CE label during the teardown... German toll will go crazy if I try to get it into the country... that this is military will only be their 2nd concern for sure
hey Mike, excellent video as usual, but I have one thing on my mind - do you have Your ebay account where you are getting rid of the interesting parts and stuff left over those cool teardowns? like yag rod from here, or little military grade motors, gyros, optics and so on..
Hi Mike, very amazing as every time :)
About the little gyro i have some info:
Its very closely related to "golden gnat" gyros, i opened one up two years ago, they are oil filled and have a flywheel incapsulated inside.
The power is fed by wires, yes and also i suspect you had to use quite some force removing the mooving bit?
The little pin on the bottom end of the assembly actually is a torsion spring that is supposed to return the assembly to its center position, its sort of easy to be ripped into two, you will most likely find a similar stub under the bearing.
In case you want to get rid of some components, im looking for synchros to get my golden gnats operate something mechanically.
In case you think shipping to the EU is still an option im interested to buy you some more workshop storage space :)
@@martinlelek3791 Yes, ebay seller name same as YT name
"Something a bit different today..." Mate, that's why I am subscribed.
Yeah. That’s sick. The secrets to antigravity are in this . . Raid
Understatement of the year
Im too
Awesome!!! What a thing to take apart!
I used to service and modify/upgrade these back in the 80's when they came off the aircraft. Really complex and precision work in a clean room for hours on end. I'd never seen the inside of the gyros and was fascinated by them - I think they spun up to around 35,000rpm !
DON'T be tempted to try to fire up the Laser Rod though (probably impossible now) - the raw beam can fry your eyeballs AND the coolant is CARCENOGENIC. They were also pressurised with a Nitrogen. Nice to get a reminder of the technology from those days.
I vaguely recall that when these were used during the Falkland's event , fog sometimes prevented the actual use , perhaps the unused missiles were subsequently fired into the sea !
Wow, i love old military tech, when cost is no concern, you got electromechanical art.
See photonicinduction for some beautifully artistic old electronics. He's got some industrial mercury rectifiers! Among other very cool bits and bobs. Shame he doesn't upload frequently anymore.
Jeez an old LRMTS head.... the back 4 plugs went off to two boxes, one called the LIFU (Laser Interface Unit) and the other was the LEU (Laser Electronics Unit) the whole kit was 'borrowed' from the even older Jaguar jet, but they had different databus' hence the need for the interface unit. Expense wise your looking at about £150k for that head, new.
The head itself was a bit of a sod to replace, you started off going up into the nose undercarriage bay, took off an access panel to get to the fairing bolts (that are wirelocked in) pop those out and your in. take off the cooling hose jubilee clips while in the bay then it's outside. Pop the 4 plugs off and the earth (centre hole on the plug end of the head) then it's just 3 cap head bolts in rose bearing mounts. Two of them are turnbuckles to adjust the laser head alignment mechanically. That involves removing the head, fitting what's known as a harm plate to the airframe mounts and firing a sighting laser from that plate at a large board with various markings at known points. It's not a small job so was only done at major servicings on the whole jet itself, unless there was a problem with the system.
On front line Sqn's the head was often only pulled if the coolant was low (white tube with green and red lines on), it was a pretty hardy bit of kit, it was often the LEU that died in some way, occasionally the LIFU.
Safety wise, on the ground without some extra bits to override certain interlocks you couldn't fire it on the ground. You even had to fit a LAM (Laser Absorbent Material) screen over the fairing window, it had an IR sensor and sealed around the fairing with a cable out to a test box. You'd fit two pins into the main undercarriage to override the WOW switches and one more beside the fairing itself for another override that I can't remember it's name...
Anyway, once all the overrides worked you could test it on the ground, the test box had an LED that blinked when the laser fired, in time with the pulses.
awesome info!
can you explain what this was actually used for?
It's basically a built in laser designator they reused from the retiring Sepecat Jaguar. The jet radar picks up a target, the Nav selects it with a hand control and the jets computers slew the head around to that bearing, the head sensor then hunts for the best amount of reflected laser energy, once it's got that, the position and range are fed to the aiming systems for the best possible accuracy. It's limited in it's movement but at it's inception was very useful. Until external targetting pods like Tiald came along.
LRMTS, LR ( laser ranging) would give the system 'slant range' and MTS ( marked target seeking) would lock onto a target that was being 'marked' by a soldier on the ground with a laser gun firing at a potential target.
This is 70s and 80s technology. Imagine what the most advanced classified technology is like.
The peek under the petticoat none of us deserved, but we all needed.
Bless you, sir.
Pleasure to be on a list with you all
happy to be here!
At 19:25, if they're using anti-backlash gears for the resolver, then they're likely using the two motors two remove slack from the driving gears. The problem is that you can't use these anti-backlash gears on a motor, as they're not suited to transmit meaningful amounts of torque. So what they're likely doing is that they're driving these two motors with opposing direction of torque. One "leading" motor rotates the assembly, while the second motor applies a slight counteracting torque. When changing direction, the previously counteracting motor becomes the "leading" motor. Basically, the torque applied by each motor never changes its sign. You only vary the magnitude of torque applied by each motor. The direction of rotation is determined by which motor applies more torque. This keeps the whole gear train under tension at all times and removes all backlash.
Wow, a design solution that would have taken me a lot of failed attempts to come up with. Again we see how the cost of a secondary motor is not an issue with military hardware that must perform to specifications before a price point.
@@KallePihlajasaari Cost may not matter but weight does. This was the lightest way of doing it.
Agreed. Seen this type of push/pull arrangement before in other systems that require highly dynamic, precision, low-overshoot responses.
so it requires not only two motors but also two sets of identical two gear chains to deliver the torque to output shaft to remove the backlash among gears. Understand.... But It seems to work well only if the loadings on output shaft is within the pre-requisite conditions, that it is always again the applied torque. If it is a fluctuates one; both in direction and magnitude. When in some cases, an unexpected outside forward torque added to output shaft, that is it is in same direction of the applied one (instead of the normal one opposite to it) and its magnitude exceeds the backward torque, it will create a certain amount of backlash.
As far as the military and suppliers are concerned, a civilian having access to the innards of such devices means this stuff is Bronze Age technology compared to current offerings.
I love taking apart military/aviation tech, really gives you a glimpse into a high quality world. Not until I took apart a generator from a fighter get I realized how much extra quality/redundancy is built into them
Thanks for this teardown.
The unit is a fusion of optical art, electronic art and mechanical art, and the wire lacing is an art form in it's own right.
Anyone who plays DCS is familiar with "GMBL LCK" (or similar airframe dependant) error on the targeting and camera pods. Those ribbons at 8:05 are why. It can't keep turning forever and has to recycle back at some point. It either does it automatically, "unwinding" itself causing a massively disruptive spinning image to the user, or it displayed "GMBL LCK" or similar message and requires the pilot/operator hit the RESET, normally resetting/slewing the TOI (target of interest) or to "plough" (straight out in front and down to track ground) or back to SOI (Sensor of interest) if set.
the 3-4 turn flex cable assembly is known in the automotive world as a "clock spring" your car has one behind the steering wheel. when horns and buttons were all on the wheel, wipers were accepable. soon as airbags came in, a directo connection was paramount so clock springs came about.
The small gyro at 30:25 is most likely a 'closed loop' sensor - a force is applied to keep the sensing element in the middle of the small range of movement and this force is proportional to the rate of rotation of the unit. High accuracy accelerometers operate on the same principle.
The sensitive axis is actually perpendicular to both the measurement axis and the spin axis - what is being measured is the gyro precession caused by the applied external torque.
That rate gyro is not too dissimilar to the ones we used to use in RC helicopters back in the 1980s/90s. Ah, the days before MEMS devices eh?
Human beings have put alot of thought and care into figuring out how to kill the enemy. Fascinating tour, thanks!
Mike, you're correct about the rate gyro, these don't need slip rings like standard gyros. Seeing you tear this down made this ex-avionics technician wince!
The mini gyroscope is pretty awesome, would be a perfect table decor stripped, and maybe functioning.
-ya wanna see something cool?
-yea
- watch this spin
proceeds to spin up 10k rpm perfectly balanced
I love how "beefy" and well made all the internals are. You can really see a massive difference between consumer electronics and things that are clearly built to last.
I think it's an LRMTS not a laser designator. So it range finds (LR) and is a marked target sensor (MTS) which allows the weapon software (and later weapons computer) to understand where a marked target is (using the backscatter of the low power laser) relative to the centre line of the a/c to display it on the HUD and allow the weapon software to know when to release a weapon (when the CCIP is over the marked target) when commanded. A laser designator would have a much higher power laser. For the Tonka that was initially the TIALD pod and later the Rafael Litening II pod
Thermal Imager And Laser Designator, for those who are wondering.
Didn't the GR4 have 2 pods under the nose, 1 for the LRMTS but not sure what was in the other one?
@@125brat the second one was FLIR. Forward looking Infra Red. It overlays onto the HUD
do you mean CCRP? (continuoulsly computed release point vs cc. impact point)
@@TheFreeSpiritKID possibly. It was a long time ago I knew this stuff!
about a dozen yrs ago I got ahold of a Pave Penny laser simulator used in practice runs, the laser system was almost the same exact unit found in your system, it took about 6 months of reverse engineering the laser and pulse system but I eventually got the laser to output 5W on the Q switch, it would pop a hole in a razor blade with no issues. Altho it was invisable and had no idea on what type of scatter I was getting off of it, I did manage to pump a matched crystal set and got green out of it for 2 pulses. First pulse discolored the crystal and the second pulse blew it apart into several pieces. The second pulse showed the laser was "spraying" light all over the place so I retired it...
This Ferranti unit is basically Brittan's version of the Pave Penny system.
"Maybe in 10, 20 years" oh man I hope you're still around in 20 years to take apart some B-2 stealth tech or something like that
Oh, neat. ^^ The FLIR meant for IR-guided ATGMs. Doubles as a death ray if you paint a person as your target!
These were quite easy to fit in the aircraft, held in place by four bolts and used turnbuckles for harmonisation.. The hardest bit was wirelocking the fairing in place to the mounting points from within the nose undercarriage bay.
well. im still waiting for you light it up
Don't take it apart, turn it on ;)
Edit, that really is a work of art for a device designed to kill.
aw man I thought we'd get to see the laser fire!
Military tech is super cool. It's always fun to see the engineering that goes into this stuff.
I used to teach student techicians how this worked and how to service it. Its refered to LRMTS.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" as Arthur C. Clarke nailed it, and this is a fine example. Such an amazing build quality. What else would you expect from military avionics? Absolutely beautiful.
Last time I saw something similar was when I watched a teardown video of a MiG gyro. These types of things are unparalleled. Now I'm turning into a shaking, crying mess of a person, clearly getting the Stendhal syndrome from looking at the marvels of engineering.
BTW. I see a lot of teflon-coated silver wire here. Love that stuff for wiring the audio connections in my tube amps.
I love your Mike mug too!
I can't wait for the reassembly video
No wonder this crap costs so much, all that intricate, complex, hand-loomed wiring, and tiny components, it's hard to believe this thing was made in 1984.
@@b.s.excisor7881 Its called the explosion of education. Hundreds of millions got access to education for longer and ha many more pathways. This is was all directly after the war and it was seen that investing in the citizens would pay off for the economy as a whole, a different mindset less than 30 years prior.
Time and many more people have meant progression has continually increased as more minds look at each matter and use their imaginations and brain.
We are the feat. , the mind we posses are those aliens, while we aren far from perfect we sure can make a damn good mechanism
Fun fact: Michel is the guy who designed the circuit all these cheap 3-wire component testers are based on!
This Nd:YAG laser has athermal cavity design - no mirrors or fine adjustments. Just prisms and corner cube reflectors, so it is not affected by the thermal distortions in the chassis. Very clever design to stay operational from -40C to +50C.
In the mid eighties, as a military guy ,I was installing this on Tornado GR1, the Harriers and Jaguars had it before that time. When the targeting pods came along, TIALD, at the time of the 1st gulf war, I think this was kind of superseded.
styropyro would go insane with one of these
Yes bro I follow his videos a lot , he would run crazy for this laser.
All those pristine components that probably haven't seen a spec of dust for 40 years.
Pressurised to prevent arcing, as you would otherwise find arcing at high voltage points as you go up in altitude. Otherwise you would have to pot pretty much all of the high voltage parts, which kind of precludes servicing them, and also still has limitations because of arcing in the connectors.
Head moves based on the pilot looking at a point, and the laser slaving to follow his head movement, and yes it would be also slaved to the 3 axis reference system gyros to maintain them in the proper attitude, using the artificial horizon to act as a reference.
Shock absorbing packs are easy to assemble, you tie them together as a pack using lacing twine, waxed, and then install as a pack, then cut the one side and pull the twine out after assembly.
Right, the reason certain electronics are only rated to altitudes of 5000m or so. So much to know and forget and so many smart people in the comments here. The complexity of the topic filters out much of the drive by crowd and only true groupies are left.
Optical filter between the YAG rod and the flash lamp is Uranium doped glass
Those tiny gyros are incredible
Protip: If you ever need stupidly thin insulated but flexible wires... Track down some old laptops to steal the LVDS/eDP cable from. Or ask a local repair shop for some junk cables.
I've used them as mod wire before in really cramped spaces, can't be beat. Very good wire to have some scraps of.
That could be good system for scanning skycam when laser removed. That structure is good and solid. And if you could add there very good camera and then made program to computer, you could scan ISS, satellites, stars and roulette for filters front of lens.
Amazing how man focuso much effort into military devices
The two motors connected either side of an anti backlash gearbox arrangement are what we use on 270 tonne telescopes to ensure both the motors and the encoders don't exhibit any backlash at the arcsecond angle resolution.
Both motors are driven with the same signal.
With some luck you might find some new-ish Russian military parts on ebay soon.
Yes, barely used, only dropped once, or only blown up a little bit.
It must be nice to have an R&D and manufacturing budget of YES... very nice stuff!
Considering that the new price of many of those parts was over a million dollars each, yes very nice stuff indeed.
But in this case it is not only about money. It is military equipment, which is hard to get normally. In Germany and many other countries the Tornado is still in duty.
Besides that is is already broken for someone who worked in an optical lab, it really hurts to see someone touching optical elements with bare hands or touching them at all, once you touch them they are broken most of the coatings can't be cleaned ....
That's kinda sad like electrically and mechanically this thing is fairly simple in the grand scheme of things but the optics are like magic.
@@oliverer3 I studied electrical Engineering with optics for me optics are the easy part, but RF (radio) is true black magic...
The vivasection of the laser head was truly cringe worthy. That was a fairly nice electro-optic cavity dumped laser module in there. Groping the lithium niobate crystal 😲😵💩😢
This takes me back. I did 10yrs third line repair to avionics and occasionally dropped on to Tornado kit. It was modern and high tech, with actual IC's when compared to the pure analogue radio and radar. Dreaded Kaptan cable, cause of many deaths and outlawed on civilian aircraft. Use of inexplicably big multiplugs,. Money no object to the mechanical parts. But what a bitch everything could be to work on it, so much had to be stripped down to get in and repair! Our UK military has had so little decent new hardware since the Cold War ended c.1990 and it shows...
We did the original Tornado dual-mode RADAR at TI back in the 70's into the 80's ... Magnetron, TWT, SSLO, it was advacned stuff back in its day too.
I used to service these back in the 80's when they came off the aircraft. Really complex and precision work in a clean room for hours on end. Nice to get a reminder of the technology from those days.
@@uploadJ The ground mapper?
@@huffers3111
Dual mode - a TF and a GM both, physically separate but both operating in the Ku band ... TF was Magnetron based and the GM used a big TWT driven by a small TWT driven by solid-state electronics including SAW filters used for pulse compression and spreading ops ...
@@uploadJ that radar always fascinated me - as late as 2007 they were still fussy about people taking pictures of them with the nose opened up. I think I might once have interned at a company that made semi-rigid microwave cable assemblies for them... At least, I recognised some of the parts... But we never knew what it was for, it just had to pass a spec! And you may have noticed you can now buy what's clearly the high power magnetron module from eBay...
ive done lots of studying on this type of equipment for fun, im so glad i get to see a teardown of one!
Styropyro needs to get his hands on one of these.
he doesn't know shit about this stuff
Yawn
Amazing tear down ... very interesting when electronics, mechanics and optics are doing ... menage a trois :-)
The enameled wires you mentioned are stranded nickel or silver plated copper with a fused polyimide wrap insulation. They've mostly been replaced by PTFE and ETFE insulated wire , but you'll still find PI wire in some high temperature applications. The spec is MIL-DTL-81381
The coolant is likely CFC-113, but it could be something else too.
Insane engineering, thank you for this.
Other tear down channels - "dismantle this laptop"
Mike - "hold my beer"
The wire insulation on most of the "teflon like" wires is most likely radiation cross-linked ethylene tetrafluoroethylene or radiation cross-linked polyvinylidene difluoride.
Nice teardown, now let's see if you can also put it back together :)
& get it working
Assembly is the reverse process of disassembly. At least I hope so. I have a motorbike engine that looks a lot like that at the moment.
The flashlamp is probably filled with krypton not xenon. Better wavelengths for yag pumping. Careful, it is a high pressure tube and the fragments can get in your eyes.
Our family business used to manufacture the dielectric coolant that went into these units. Very cool to see this. We sold most of it to Toronado jets running out of Italy..
@King Diamond Is there public domain information or patents with specifications for the fluids, would be interesting to know. I recall working with a high voltage power-station cooling pump variable speed thyristor drives that used ultra pure water with active in-line conductivity monitoring to warn about coolant replacement before it would cause problems in the thyristor stacks. Not sure if it had additives.
Don't know about this unit, but, the Tornado RADAR used Silicon oil in the GMR (LRU 2) and TFR (LRU 8?) radar transmitters ...
@@uploadJ Yes! The material we made was a silicone based material made from Octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane (Dow D4) processed with sulfuric acid to bind additives.
I used to build electrical harnesses like these...getting terrible flashbacks watching this lol
Can you do a video of putting it all back together and working like AvE does? :')
Michel does amazing work getting all sorts of avionics up and running, well worth a watch.
Think about the fact that this assembly was manufactured 50 years ago (ish) ... now imagine the technological advances since then. Mind blowing.
wow, this was the coolest thing ive seen in a while, thanks for this one!
Your workbench looks like what that laser used to point at. Thanks for the vid.
is it me or is the narration perfectly clear except 10% where he will utter things that sound like "slurb, moh bafa-bafa buh."
Very impressive for the era it was build in.
I bought one of these some time ago, have it stored to check it out later. Would be interesting to get the laser to fire. Thanks for the teardown, very informative.
The VERY general rule of thumb is that if tech is 50 years old from today (or older) then there is a decent chance its okay to have it. or at least, there is a decent chance no one will raise an eyebrow at it. 75 years and you are almost certainly in the clear. obviously there are some exceptions. famously, the design documents for the ignition fuse for the two atomic bombs dropped during WWII are still controlled to this day (as far as i know). there was a case where someone actually purchased the ship side of the fuse system that was kept from one of the bombers (or it was an unused prototype unit). its literally just a metal cylinder with connector pins in it. but the guy got a visit from the DOE and they took it off him. its a really old story that may be apocryphal but the DOE will always come sniffing around if you do certain things in the US like buy a bunch of uranium ore samples (which are perfectly legal to buy as rocks that are unprocessed).
Amazing bit of kit.
It's awesome to see it come apart, but at the same time, pretty heartsore.
Looks like a Ferranti Laser Ranger and Marked Target Seeker (LRMTS). A forward air controller (FAC) would get within visual range of a target and use a Laser Target Marker (LTM) to illuminate a target. The aircraft-mounted LRMTS picks up the laser backscatter and guides the aircraft's missiles to the target at which point the FAC beats a hasty retreat.
Could it (the LRMTS) also be used to generate the CCIP (bomb-aiming point) for the pilot's HUD?
I boggle at the complexity and costs of something like this, in both development and manufacture.
"Chube" 😄 I love it
"a bit of backstory here: a couple of years ago I was bidding on a thermo nuclear doomsday device on ebay. However I got a phone call from the seller who was a bit embarrassed. He got a call from the ministry of peace, he shouldn't have this device. We had a lough. Nevertheless the times have changed"
xD
👀👀👀😂
Great teardown as always!
When comparing this kind of military hardware with the commercial hardware at the time I am always amazed by the gap in both craftmanship, but also technology. It makes me wonder what kind of tech is in a lot of current gen military hardware. Although probably most of that magic is done on chip nowadays.
Really? Is the Technology gap BIG?
Modern semiconductor tech is way ahead of most military stuff as only the whole global market can buy those 10bn$ FABs.. Would be nice to see some photolitography machine teardown lol...
The machined parts have a real hand made feel to them.
Is the MoD aware that the complete Tornado fleet is now available as hundreds of spare parts on eBay ? 😁
Probably, seeing as they were the ones who sold the lot on public disposal auction.
No words to say about this video,mind blowing
I am in awe of the design and manufacturing effort that went into developing this. Seems "criminal" to take it apart, but what else could you actually do with it ? Thank you for posting; I've been fortunate to have destroyed some vintage equipment for educational purposes, and a few spare parts. Watching it is great, but actually being able to hold the parts, and dare I say, SMELL (probably the conformal coating), the inner workings is something you can only experience doing it yourself.
For the life of me I cannot fathom how any 1000 people could think through something like this, let alone in 1970. It really makes me wonder about how many failed attempts were made before they landed on this final design.
Also amazes me that this monster could essentially be replicated today with an iPhone.
You can't replicate a 5 megawatt laser with servo guidance and tracking on an iPhone.
@@rinzler9775 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
What a incredible piece of electronics and mechanics! Thank you for sharing it :)
Great tear down. I liked all the beam turning optics that deliver the laser power to the gimbaled output aperture. Neat little YAG pulse laser too!
That really is a beautiful piece of engineering!
The glass plate in the cavity is to prevent UV to degrade the rod.
Great video...and think we still have to fill out the intended use form with Digikey when we buy a resistor!
Incredible bit of kit. Would love to see the rest of the system
It's interesting they are using 13W3 connectors as you noted, but not using the three high frequency / high current pins.
Absolutely Fascinating! thanks Mike ! 😀👍
Beautiful old TTL components.
This device featured prominently in the new Top Gun movie. For plot tension reasons they didn't seem to be terribly reliable.
Dead-eye! Dead-eye! Dead-eye! (lol I was looking for a comment like this)
Very interesting.
I dirt bike ride around China Lake Naval Weapons Test Center in the Piute Mountains Ca. There is a F-105 Fighter Jet crash site (Story pilot ejected) Hard enough to get to it is still mostly there. I did take the damaged Artificial horizon indicator. Dissected it like you and found 2 gyros inside about 3" dia. Made by Sperry corp. Very fine, like a Swiss watch construction. Looked very high dollar but your break down of this seeker looks way more pricey.
"things people shouldn't have" ;)
Thanks Mike. Lots of fond memories in there... 👍🏻🇬🇧
that pulse tube controller also 'codes' the laser so that way it cant be spoofed by the person your trying to shoot. the lasers ground crew use have to be on their pulse frequency for the weapons to lock on.
I think this was designed and built in Edinburgh by Ferranti, when they were still a family business.
When this random video came up I thought " cool hes gonna turn on a big laser " . Proceeds to tear it apart with childlike enthusiasm ... Thank you. I feel like a kid again lol.
What a awesome peek into military technology of yesteryear 😎 thanks Mike for this unique content 👍👍👍
Fascinating! thank you
fascinating video Mike - thanks! I used to work on the one fitted to the Jaguars, very similar. I never dismantled it to that extent though!