Choosing the Electric Power System for a Short Range Missile

This paper develops an approach to the selection of an electric power system and the prime internal power source for a short range missile. Every conference has many papers on the subject of power sources for missiles. They cover such items as batteries, ram air turbines, hot gas driven turbines, and such possible power sources as thermionic, thermoelectric, solar cells. Each of the different sources has a particular field of appropriate application and many of the fields overlap. Papers on the choice of application of these items to power systems are very few. It is primarily the function of the engineer to apply the knowledge and the devices available in order to create an efficient overall operating system.