Nike Hercules

Really nice!!!

Nike Hercules was for a long, long time the main interceptor missile of AMI (Italian Air Force) with an entire Air Brigade dedicated to the use, handling and manutenction of this missile.

Italian Nike sites was placed essentialy in the northern part of the nation, especially closer to the east border (where there was the former Yugoslavia).
 
Via Atomic Skies, a drawing of what seems to be a ICEWORM Nike-Hercules installation:
 

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Those who can get to the SF Bay Area might find this of interest.

http://nikemissile.org/site_sf88.shtml

Under the SALT Treaty with the Soviet Union,, all fixed surface to air missile sites had to be dismantled except that two sites could remain, one to protect a designated ICBM site and one to defend the National Capitol. In additon, one site could be preserved in a non-operational status as a musem. This is the US' site.
 
I love the radar most. The target tracking radar is said to be very accurate that it still serve today as instrumentation radar.

The design is also i would say unique as it use metal lens for forming its beam instead of more traditional parabolic reflector antenna. Such design would be seen in Type-984 and Soviet 1S32 "Pat hand". and It's a monopulse design from the start. more advanced than S-75.

Looking at the antenna..i cant help but looking back at the old days in another forum where people did actually think that monopulse radar NEEDS slotted planar array antenna based on just 1 image from Stimson's "Introduction to Airborne Radar 2nd Edition" showing amplitude comparison monopulse application in airborne radar. using maybe AN/APG-73 antenna which divide its aperture into 4 quadrants. They then made conclusion that anything else not using that arrangement is not monopulse. I wonder tho if such misconception still persist.
 

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