Originally Posted by
wiggy
I'd be thinking more in term of KISS, or in other words, why even think of making it that complicated? I'd also be wondering how much RF associated stuff, especially related to fire control, you'd want to be squirting at a possibly intelligence gathering balloon.
Simpler way would be pilot points the aircraft in the direction of the balloon, designates the target in suitable way, pulls the trigger at a suitable distance. missile launches, senses target (see below), meanwhile pilot rolls aircraft away and heads off home for tea, toast and medals. I'm not sure why guns would enter into the thinking...
And to emphasise the point made by myself earlier and another poster upthread, the likes of Raytheon have moved on from using dumb seeker heads that sense something pushing out a lot of energy at the longer IR wavelengths (e.g. produced by an object at jet pipe temperature). They're now using imaging arrays capable of working in the near visual IR and possibly the visual range ....The balloon would probably be an easy target, especially against a contrasting (in both visual and in the IR ) background.
The envelope itself will be practically transparent in IR. The seeker found the instrument platform and destroyed that.
The reason for trajectory planning for a gun? Because not every problem benefits from an air-to-air missile. To recover the instrument package with the least damage a few shots (they can make multiple passes) would ventilate the balloon to a suitable descent rate.