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In Reply to: Victor, are vacuum tubes a good choice for an orbiting satellite armed with nukes? posted by TAFKA Steve on August 08, 2000 at 15:54:03:
***Saw "Geezers In Space" (aka "Space Cowboys") and looks like there are Sovtek 6922's mounted on one of the circuit boards on the orbiting Soviet tactical nuke satellite supposedly launched in 1983. I know about the EMP advantage, but does it make sense to launch something with vacuum tubes and expect no maintenance requirements in 17 years?I shall not pretend to be a "true" military expert, I just spent some time in that area of development.
The answer to your question is basically NO. EMP is only one of many things you need to consider. If your equipment can survive EMP but can't see the target because it has limited processing capability - I don't think this is a good compromise.
In the Soviet military electronics the technological resources. Once it started, however, it was clear that this was the way of the future - all EMP be damned. As far as I know the systems were converted to solid state as fast as it was possible, because with every such conversion PERFORMANCE was improved by a great degree. Most military systems - missles, aicraft - have very long service lives on their bodies, frames, etc. It is avionics that needs to be upgraded constantly. Look at B-52's, F-15's, F-16's, etc - how they had evolved over 20years or so. Little changes to the airframes, HUGE changes in electronics.
So if you ask me is it possible that a particular piece of equipment was designed with the sole objective of surviving the EMP and therefore was tube-based - I would say it is possible, but perhaps that is not the best possibility. But as the general approach - tubes are leaving. They are hindrance to better performance, simple as that. Are tubes still flying in the US and Russia? As far as I know still yes in both cases.
Follow Ups:
> If your equipment can survive EMP but can't see the target because it has limited processing capability - I don't think this is a good compromise.Only comment is that for once we are talking about scoring points for getting close as in "horse shoes, hand grenades and Atom weapons"
I shall not pretend to be a "true" military expert, I just spent some time in that area of development.The answer to your question is basically NO. EMP is only one of many things you need to consider. If your equipment can survive EMP but can't see the target because it has limited processing capability - I don't think this is a good compromise.
*****In the Soviet military electronics the transistorization started years behind the US - due to significant shortage of the technological resources.**** Once it started, however, it was clear that this was the way of the future - all EMP be damned. As far as I know the systems were converted to solid state as fast as it was possible, because with every such conversion PERFORMANCE was improved by a great degree. Most military systems - missles, aicraft - have very long service lives on their bodies, frames, etc. It is avionics that needs to be upgraded constantly. Look at B-52's, F-15's, F-16's, etc - how they had evolved over 20years or so. Little changes to the airframes, HUGE changes in electronics.
So if you ask me is it possible that a particular piece of equipment was designed with the sole objective of surviving the EMP and therefore was tube-based - I would say it is possible, but perhaps that is not the best possibility. But as the general approach - tubes are leaving. They are hindrance to better performance, simple as that. Are tubes still flying in the US and Russia? As far as I know still yes in both cases.
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