[The Duke]

Many years ago I worked on experimental navigational systems that replaced 1950's era mechanical gyros with fiber optic "ring gyros". Several years later I Googled for "ring gyro" and noted that all the white papers written since originated from China.

The implications were sobering to me.

[grey_whiskers]

Many years ago I worked on experimental navigational systems that replaced 1950's era mechanical gyros with fiber optic "ring gyros". Several years later I Googled for "ring gyro" and noted that all the white papers written since originated from China.

The implications were sobering to me.

Clinton (and most of his Admin) should have been tried for Treason long ago.

[MtnClimber]

The left hates the USA and will sell us out when given the chance.

[JoeFromSidney]

Many years ago I worked on experimental navigational systems that replaced 1950's era mechanical gyros with fiber optic "ring gyros". Several years later I Googled for "ring gyro" and noted that all the white papers written since originated from China.

Back in the late 1950s I worked on inertial guidance systems at Wright Field. Part of my job was to look for alternatives to mechanical gyros. One of the alternatives I looked at was the Sagnac gyro, named after its French inventor. It involved an interferometer. When rotated about an axis normal to the plane of the interferometer, the interference fringes would shift in a direction related to the direction of rotation, and by an amount related to the speed of rotation.

I did the calculations to see whether we could get one to fit into a missile: both longer path length and shorter wavelength would increase sensitivity. My calculations showed that to get a device small enough to fit into a missile, while having the same sensitivity as the mechanical gyros we were using, would require that the "illumination" be at gamma ray wavelengths. That was impossible, since there are no mirrors for gamma rays, to cause them to follow a closed path. Scratch that idea.

Many years later I was reading an article in Aviation Week about laser gyros. That intrigued me. How do you make a gyro out of a laser? As I read the article, I had a head-slapping moment. You make a Sagnac gyro with a spool of optical fiber to get a long path length. With that, you can do it at optical wavelengths instead of with gamma rays. Obvious, once you see it.