Missile Whistle

The range safety officers at Cape Canaveral and other U.S. missile centers have a recurrent nightmare. A missile is climbing out perfectly; everything works, and there is no need to press the "destruct" button that sends a special radio signal racing after an errant missile and commands it to blow itself to bits. Yet suddenly the destruct system is activated, and the missile, possibly with a man atop it, explodes in a blossom of flame. The odds against such a mishap are small, but there is always a chance that an unintended signal perhaps from a badly adjusted ham radio, may destruct a missile that is flying properly or still on its launching pad.

Last week Raytheon Co. announced a "command receiver," also irreverently called "the missile whistle," designed to avoid any possibility of such a mistake. Slightly bigger than three packs of cards, the missile whistle contains five electronic filters that make it deaf to everything except a combination of five different radio waves transmitted simultaneously on narrow frequency bands. The most complex electronic babble sounds like silence to a missile equipped with this gadget, but when the five-part signal comes, it picks it out of the racket and obeys its command. The five frequencies can be varied, giving millions of combinations, so each missile of a group can have, if necessary, its own drop-dead signal.

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