TOGS Development

Introduction. 

Previously, I have written about the events that led to the Private Venture TOGS demonstrator, why TOGS works as well as it does and briefly subsequent work on the Challenger 2 day and TOGS sights.

Readers may remember the threats I received from some scientific civil servants (Endnote 1) whilst the demonstrator was being made. "We will never forgive you" and "we will bury you". The former was so. As for the latter, it was they largely who were buried. The players then for the most part are long gone. Anything I write now will not harm my company. Sufficient water has flowed under the bridge for me to relate what happened after prototype was demonstrated and before TOGS entered service. The civil service interventions during this period for the most part degraded TOGS performance. As a result, when compared with the demonstrator, production TOGS performance was inferior. I was only able to stop the worst of these interventions. Some civil servant interventions that I could not stop were corrected later by post production modification, at cost to the tax payer but profit for us. Others were so fundamental that they could not be rectified; indeed, the legacy is with us today on Challenger 2.

Had my experience been unusual that would have been one thing. Recently reading books such as "The Blunted Sword" and "The Great Gunnery Scandal" made me realise that, far from being unusual, it was typical of the way Whitehall always has treated innovators. They either ignored the innovator, or appropriated Intellectual Property withholding proper remuneration and degrading their innovations. The tipping point for me on whether to write this or not, came with the information that Whitehall tried to get Vickers to dismiss Barnes Wallis when irritated by his advocacy of the bouncing bomb. I believe I was close to similar treatment. It is too much to hope that this article will influence how Whitehall works. But, it may warn serving officers when working there, not to adopt Whitehall ethos as I have seen happen. The ethos is "pleasing master" above all else, whereby personal advancement is gained. This is because promotion is determined by a committee that take care not to know who it is being considered. They go by jobs done and on line management confidential reports. In the Private Sector promotion is decided by those who do !mow the individual, often ignoring the line manager's view. Indeed, if somebody outshines the line manager, often he or she replaces that manager. What matters is the likely effect on profit.

TOGS Project Definition.

Following the firing with the demonstrator TOGS that many soldiers witnessed but the civil servants declined to watch, a rumpus in MOD resulted in an operational emergency staff requirement for such equipment. It was decided to have a competitive "Project Definition". I believe the purpose of this was to wrest control away from my firm to the design establishments. Knowing that I was not liked by those who would judge the competition, it was decided that I should not continue leading our team but I retained influence in it. What was now required by these Civil Servant Establishments was significantly different to the demonstrator. Curiously, accurate gun aiming was desirable only. Clearly those setting the competition still partly retained their long held belief that aiming accuracy was impossible.

1. The Thermal Imager Sensor Head (TISH) was to move in elevation driven by a shaft through turret armour attached to the day sight mounting. There  was to be no elevation servo sub-system. The reason for this may have been that they did not understand how TOGS wipes out servo error by appropriate graticule movement in the picture frame. They should have investigated the demonstrator. Alternatively, they were concerned about our patents. We were able to show that a shafted system would degrade accuracy because of wind-up. Shaft drive would also dictate a TISH position that would obstruct commander's forward right vision. This was one we won, the servo based system prevailed. Shaft drive wrong footed our competitors. .

2. The TISH objective lens is the aperture through which energy from the target scene must pass. Enlarge the aperture and you increase sensor sensitivity. The demonstrator had an objective diameter of 150 mm. We were required to adopt a diameter of 100mm. Area is proportional to the diameter squared. So, the degradation would have been over one half In the event, we demanded an increase. Only 120mm was authorised, to my dismay. If 150 is taken to be the benchmark 100%, 120 is 64% and 100 is 44%. The greater the sensitivity, the larger the field of view that can be given whilst maintaining adequate viewing in adverse thermal conditions. I know how important field of view is.

3. The demonstrator used our private venture scanner, IR18. Had this scanner been used in production TOGS, the ministry funded development scanner TICM 2 would have been a white elephant. So, recognising how unpalatable this would be, we agreed, customer choice. TICM 2 uses 8 detectors on a sub-strait. IR18 has the same sub-strait but uses only 4 of the 8 detectors. IR18 can drive the 4 twice as hard as the 8 in TICM2 because the limiting factor is heat in the sub-strait. The sensitivity of the two scanners is the same if all detectors work equally well. In practice, some are better than others. IR18 can chose the best 4 out of the 8 and this gives an advantage, typically 10%. We were told to use TICM 2.

4. TOGS needs some signal processing. The demonstrator used a commercial micro-processor, Intel 8086. We were told to use the ministry funded F 100 L that, like TICM2, otherwise would be a white elephant. It was difficult to program and slow when compared with 8086. Its shortcomings were such that we were paid to revert retrospectively to 8086 and modify production units already in service.

5. There already was an interface between out Tank Laser Sight and the Marconi fire control computer IFCS. Our sight told the computer what was the range and it told the sight where to position the aiming ellipse. We used this interface additionally without telling Marconi for gun aiming with the TOGS demonstrator. We were told during project definition that two digital computers should have a digital interface and not use the existing analogue one. Marconi, not helpful to their competitor, specified signal amplitude of 1 volt peak to peak. In practice, some computers only provided 0.4 volts and this caused endless trouble in early production units. If there is a proven interface between two competitive contractors, it is wise to stick to it and not change it for philosophical reasons.

6. The Chieftain TOGS sensor is mounted on the turret left side whilst the laser range finder is on the right. So, a simple TOGS laser aiming mark can only denote the laser line at one range. If the range is known, this "parallax" error can be corrected but the laser has to be aimed before the range is known. The TOGS demonstrator overcome the problem with a right pointing arrow laser aiming mark. Gunners were taught to lay this on the left (as seen) edge of the target. This simple, effective, solution was changed during development. The gunner now had to set an approximate range first by adjusting stadia marks to top and bottom of target prior to laser flashing. If the laser and the stadia ranges were not in approximate agreement the process had to be repeated. This change lengthened every engagement and caused a hiatus when laser range was not close to stadia. Range by stadia depends on the target perceived height being close to a standard which is not always the case.

7. The detector sub-strait needs to be cooled to liquid air temperature. The original idea was that this be done by compressed air from bottles charged up by an on tank electrically driven compressor. The compressor could only charge to 2500 lbs / sq in. At this pressure, cool down time at switch on was a minute or so. To decrease this to the now required 10 seconds, an additional small bottle was added, charged off the tank to 4500 lbs / sq in and used only at switch on. The complication added considerable cost and complexity to the plumbing and decreased reliability. In a dusty tank environment, it is not a good idea to disconnect bottles for off tank charging.

Before loosing all influence, after we won the Project Definition, I was able to stop one utter nonsense. The development team were happy that I should do so, to take the opprobrium away from them. Civil servants now required that the Challenger 1 TOGS be periscopic, servoed in azimuth, elevation by servoed rotating top mirror and mounted where the loader's head is when attending to the co-ax MG. Had this happened, aiming accuracy would have been degraded, commander's left forward view obstructed and cost very significantly increased. It was the configuration previously chosen for the defunct tank development MBT 80. Staff at MVEE (Military Vehicle & Engineering Establishment) could not reconcile themselves that it was not the way to go. School-boy physics dictate that for like performance the instrument front window (germanium) area would need to be four times bigger than TOGS. This is just not practical. A front window twice as big might be doable but this would halve sensitivity. (Endnote 2)

At the meeting called to discuss this, I poured scorn on the periscopic concept on the grounds of the importance of commander's frontal arc vision and that the loader should not be obstructed at his vital task. "What is the point", I asked, "of being able to search for targets away from gun axis when inferior imaging would often render the target unseen? When searching for targets, it is handy to take your gun with you. In adverse visibility, it is not as though the gunner can be busy in a direction other than that of commander's viewing. To spend much on TI and then not to have good viewing is a poor option." I had lunch with a REME staff officer whom I had known well when he was EME 5RTR some 20 years before. "Ralph", he said, "why do you anger people so over a cause that you are bound to lose. MVEE will have its way". "You can re-pay me the cost of this lunch if they do win" was my response. After lunch, the periscopic configuration was rejected and the TOGS concept prevailed. I now see this as the beginning of the taking away of development and design from civil servant establishments and passing it to contractors. TOGS begged the question, what were these establishments contributing post research? It is the lot of most innovators, to lose all influence on their creation at some stage but this did not lessen the pain for me. After the meeting on the configuration of TOGS on Challenger 1, I left the Development team to spend two years doing not very much. I did not enquire on the source of the decision, internal or customer driven. To have known more might have made me bitter and life is too short for this. In any event, a respite after 18 months intensive work was welcome. It was time to buy a bigger boat and sail extensively in west of Scotland waters. Two years later the trading situation had changed. The establishments were no longer our potential customer, for tanks it was now Vickers. The company would need new products for end of TOGS production in about 3 year's time. I was promoted to lead a department now, not a team. This department were to end all Marconi involvement in tank fire control and to grow our tank business on Challenger 2. The good times returned for me. But, nothing could be as sweet, as when the TOGS demonstrator for Chieftain and Challenger 1 upset the Ministry of Defence (Procurement Executive) apple cart.

TOGS Production and afterwards.

There are lessons from the way MOD managed TOGS production. The production was divided into three "tranches". We were required to copy TOGS drawings to our competitors and compete for the third tranche. Worse for us, the price we quoted for the third tranche, win or lose, was what we would be paid for the second tranche. My advice to my company was to quote high, loose the third tranche but make a whopping big profit on the second. I knew, from the interaction between my design department and our production, that no other company could meet the third tranche timescale. So, assuming we lost it, a hiatus in an operational emergency project was inevitable from which we might well profit. But, the company quoted low and still lost the tranche. We knew that the company who won, after bearing the tooling costs, were bound to make a serious loss. The production hiatus duly happened. MOD then divided the third tranche in half, asking us to make one half. My advice was to tell MOD to "get lost" but no, we made them. This left our competitor with one sixth of total production over which to amortise tooling cost. Whilst delivery delay was reduced from what otherwise would have been, it was not avoided entirely. Their production engineers tried telephoning my design engineers for advice. I instructed a standard response. "We are not contracted to provide you with this information. Good by." I did not see how our competitor could survive such a loss. It would have been embarrassing for MOD had they defaulted. My guess is that they obtained additional funding. If this is so, then not only was there a production delay, it cost more than if we had done all production. Soon we were to buy this weakened company and close its production facility. However, there was more fallout from this misguided MOD policy. Throughout my civilian working life, I worked at development and design. I had no time for our marketing department. They for the most part were gin swilling useless mouths in empty suits. During the private venture TOGS, they had opposed this work. ("The customer does not want it".) The lack of significant profit on second and half third TOGS tranches gave them an opportunity to be heard. They argued that, if we did no development at all, then because of lower overheads we would win production contracts for what other firms had developed. Fortunately, by the time they had made headway with this, funded development work on Challenger 2 had begun and could not realistically be stopped. For a time, I felt my design department was threatened. The result of MOD's policy on competition was the near annihilation of our UK competitors. Two companies we bought, two closed and one moved on to other work. So, by Challenger 2 time, competition from within UK was no longer practical. I made use of the new situation to make certain a good profit from Challenger 2 production, for which we were by far the largest sub-contractor on all aspects of the tank by value. It does not pay to oppress a supplier; they will find a way to make you pay.

Ralph Bagnall-Wild.

Endnote 1. Scientific civil servants can be divided into categories. Those actually doing Research work I do not criticise. Some are brilliant. It is many of those doing Development, or Design, or managing Production that I fault. Generally, the more senior they are the worse they are. To generalise, it was politicking that won their promotion, not fielding soldier useful accoutrements.

Endnote 2. I now understood the determination to reduce TOGS aperture from 150mm (as on the demonstrator) to 100 and then allowing grudgingly 120mm. A periscopic configuration with 150mm is utterly impractical on a tank. I believe MVEE had it in mind to change from the TOGS configuration from the outset. They waited until after competitive Project Definition, knowing that earlier we would have offered a non conforming system with lower cost and less technical risk. After winning, they hoped we would be compliant.