It's a great photo, as interesting historical photography goes anyway. Raises some questions for me:
1) What's the light source for the warheads, are they glowing with reentry heat or is it something else?
2) What's the warhead-warhead distance in this shot? Was it programmed to fit a tactical pattern like "fleet destruction" of 1-mile warhead-to-warhead?
3) Is this a radial pattern or linear? Seems like it's either radial or there's some significant amount of error that's observable. But it might depend on #2 above.
4) The inertial system was not inside each warhead, right? But rather inside the missile itself?
5) Did they chopper & swim out and retrieve this stuff? Wouldn't want the other side to capture it for intel, I'd guess...
1. Re-entry heat glows the MIRVs. The re-entry package heats up to more than 1000C often. Specialized carbon composites similar to ones in space vehicles are used.
2. I think this photo was more of a time lapse than programmed delivery of warheads at definite spacing. There are videos of MIRV entries which are equally cool. Including one of the impact site, where one can see dummy warheads impacting target zone few seconds apart. (Second video is an animated flight sequence)
3. Unlikely its radial or linear entirely. The camera perspective makes it look all of them in a line.
4. Terminal guidance is not on each MIRV. But small spin generators stabilize the flight towards target. The warhead bus has onboard computer which releases individual warheads at high velocity once the correct attitude over the target is reached. Terminal flight is unguided ballistics based on calculations prior to release. Needless to say, the warhead bus releases them at a LEO altitude, so by impact they are easily ~10-15 Mach
5. Yes & Yes. US DoD seems very particular on keeping Kwajalein in mostly pristine state. All discernible parts are recovered in the atoll & shallow sea around it. A lot of people from the local population are employed in the upkeep of the facility & maintenance. Usually the impact zone is a very concentrated area. Foreign military access is out of bounds with US Strategic Command presence in the atolls.
Very interesting, thanks for the answers & video links.
I am imagining that the terminal inertial guidance --> imparting MIRV guidance phase must have been planned very delicately. Watching the adjustment rockets firing this way and that in the second video gives the intuitive sense that the process is far from easy to plan for.
1) What's the light source for the warheads, are they glowing with reentry heat or is it something else?
2) What's the warhead-warhead distance in this shot? Was it programmed to fit a tactical pattern like "fleet destruction" of 1-mile warhead-to-warhead?
3) Is this a radial pattern or linear? Seems like it's either radial or there's some significant amount of error that's observable. But it might depend on #2 above.
4) The inertial system was not inside each warhead, right? But rather inside the missile itself?
5) Did they chopper & swim out and retrieve this stuff? Wouldn't want the other side to capture it for intel, I'd guess...
...and probably more...