Naval Guns 145 



5-inch guided projectile developed and tested at the Dahlgren Laboratory. 



Before we got to the next step in the normal evolution of that process, that 

 would be getting into developing the controls to go along with this sensor, we 

 discovered that Texas Instruments had a gentleman who worked for them 

 named Weaver Lafferty. He was trying to sell guided projectiles to the Army 

 based on the concept that was used in guiding Navy low-drag bombs. That 

 concept was in the early stages of being introduced in the Vietnamese War, and 

 it was the first guided bomb that was developed using lasers for guidance. 

 Lafferty was trying to sell that concept for guided projectiles, and he believed 

 that'he could actually engineer that weapon to the point where it could be fired 

 from guns. He didn't come to the first Naval Gunnery Conclave, but there was a 

 representative from Texas Instruments there. Maybe by that route he learned 

 about the work that was going on here. 



Warren Kitterman* came on the scene at NAVSEA in those days and was in 

 on some of the early decisions as to what we should do with guns. He was in the 

 Marine Corps in those days and met Lafferty somewhere. Warren came up with 

 Lafferty, and we got together with him and heard what he had to say. We 

 decided very quickly that he had the fastest way into guided projectiles. We 

 abandoned the effort that we had going with the people from Space Research 

 Corporation because we would have to, in our opinion, redo a lot of things that 

 Lafferty already had done. 



We were interested in getting a feasibility demonstration as early as possible, 

 so we then started pursuing the Texas Instruments' approach to guided projec- 

 tiles and that incorporated the laser guidance. In those days, we didn't know 

 how to make that work on anything less than 8-inch rounds, so that was why the 

 8-inch was selected instead of the 5-inch round. We realized, of course, that the 

 Navy's gun inventory in the 8-inch size was declining alarmingly and that we 



*Mr. Warren P. Kitterman is presently the 8-inch Gun Systems Engineering Integration Manager 

 at Dahlgren. In the early days of the guided projectile effort, he was a Lieutenant Colonel in the 

 Marine Corps. 



