Fire-control system
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.
For the process of suppressing or extinguishing a fire, see Fire control.Land based fire control[edit]
Anti-aircraft based fire control[edit]
By the start of World War II, aircraft altitude performance had increased so much that anti-aircraft guns had similar predictive problems, and were increasingly equipped with fire-control computers. The main difference between these systems and the ones on ships was size and speed. The early versions of the High Angle Control System, or HACS, of Britain's Royal Navy were examples of a system that predicted based upon the assumption that target speed, direction, and altitude would remain constant during the prediction cycle, which consisted of the time to fuze the shell and the time of flight of the shell to the target. The USN Mk 37 system made similar assumptions except that it could predict assuming a constant rate of altitude change. The Kerrison Predictor is an example of a system that was built to solve laying in "real time", simply by pointing the director at the target and then aiming the gun at a pointer it directed. It was also deliberately designed to be small and light, in order to allow it to be easily moved along with the guns it served.
The radar-based M-9/SCR-584 Anti-Aircraft System was used to direct air defense artillery since 1943. The MIT Radiation Lab's SCR-584 was the first radar system with automatic following, Bell Laboratory's M-9[18] was an electronic analog fire-control computer that replaced complicated and difficult-to-manufacture mechanical computers (such as the Sperry M-7 or British Kerrison predictor). In combination with the VT proximity fuze, this system accomplished the astonishing feat of shooting down V-1 cruise missiles with less than 100 shells per plane (thousands were typical in earlier AA systems).[19][20] This system was instrumental in the defense of London and Antwerp against the V-1.
Although listed in Land based fire control section anti-aircraft fire control systems can also be found on naval and aircraft systems.