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50 so u R c e s o f we a p o n sy s T e m s In n o v a T Io n In T h e depaR TmenT o f defense
dropped sharply after it exited the launch tube (due to the large disparity between
initial spinning and high aircraft velocity). Slow recovery of the rocket during
flight typically resulted in wide variation in trajectory and poor tracking to the
target. Researchers at China Lake adapted a folding-fin mechanism originally
developed in the Army to improve the stability and accuracy of air-launched
spinning rockets. The folding fins remained closed around the rocket during
firing, but, once the rocket cleared the launch tube, they extended into a full,
fixed-fin position through the operation of a pressure-actuated piston assembly.
The improved folding-fin design developed at the Naval Ordnance Test Station
was quickly adapted to the new, multipurpose, air-launched Zuni rocket, which
replaced the original fixed-fin Holy Moses in the early 1950s. 42
Throughout the 1960s and well into the 1970s, China Lake continuously
served as the Navy’s primary source of missile and rocket technology. By the
1980s, however, the mission of the Naval Ordnance Test Station—renamed the
Naval Weapons Center in 1967—had begun to change to reflect the realities of
the Defense Department’s growing reliance on industrial contractors and other
private-sector institutions for weapons R&D and production. “Weapons Center
personnel,” observed Aviation Week and Space Technology in 1986, “now spend
more time managing technology with defense contractors involved with the
design and manufacture of a weapon system, rather than in earlier times, when a
need would arise and the center would design, build, test, and deliver to the fleet
a weapon to meet the requirement in record time.” 43 China Lake still maintained
extensive R&D, pilot production, and testing and evaluation facilities, but much
of the work on weapons focused on system support, upgrades, and other services
for industrial contractors. 44 The propulsion laboratory, for example, operated
R&D, pilot production, and test facilities to support work on explosives, solid
and liquid propellants, warheads, and rocket motors. These facilities were also
used “to study and find solutions to industry production problems and . . . serve
as a production source to meet surge requirements for a few months during a
crisis.” The center’s electronics manufacturing productivity laboratory carried out
similar functions, with a mission to “upgrade production facilities in the [United
States], reduce costs, improve product quality, and reduce production times.” 45
As scientists and engineers at the Naval Ordnance Test Station evaluated
the performance of missiles and rockets, their East Coast counterparts at
the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia, conducted similar testing
work on conventional ordnance—bombs, guns, and projectiles—prior to
full-scale industrial production. Unlike China Lake, however, Dahlgren did
42 Gerrard-Gough and Christman, The Grand Experiment at Inyokern, 84, 294–97.
43 D. M. North, “Navy Center Expands Mission to Include Technology Management,” Aviation Week
and Space Technology 124 (20 January 1986): 46.
44 In the 1980s, the Michelson Laboratory maintained its long-standing tradition in fundamental
research, but it also supported work on fuzes, guidance systems, propellants, and explosives. Researchers
in other laboratories at the Naval Weapons Center studied lasers, optical systems, radar, electromagnetic
interference, and microelectronics technology. See Mordoff, “China Lake Facilities Dedicated to Diverse
Weapons Tasks,” 40.
45 Mordoff, “China Lake Facilities Dedicated to Diverse Weapons Tasks,” 55–56.