As an electronics/embedded designer it hurts somewhat to see this beautiful tough MIL-SPEC technology, only manufactured to the highest of standards.... to be running for just a few minutes...

I am not sure what makes me more surprised: the amount of hig-spec electronic components in that thing, or the fact that this guy got into possession of a missile guidance computer.

40 years ago I took delivery of a box at my place of business in Belfast. I was expecting a resin sample from a chemical company and the box arrived by conventional courier. Instead it contained multiple carefully packaged cylindrical electronic devices. The address label for my firm had been stuck over the original destination "Short Brothers", a local defence contractor. The contained covering letter revealed the sender to be Graseby Dynamics, an English defence contractor, and the contents were described as the revised design of the Javelin missile warhead firing mechanism. I contacted Shorts and the police. and within 30 minutes my premises were crawling with plain clothes state security. The items were taken away and I was interviewed at some length. Somehow the press got hold of the story and it made the front page of the local paper. My business partner was by coincidence a friend of a department head in Shorts. He later revealed that a government junior minister had lost his job over this, and there had been several individuals severely disciplined both at Shorts and Graseby. I never did get my resin sample.

This guy is a genius. Not only is he a great engineer, he is also the inventor of the French accent!

Wow, great teardown, thanks for sharing.

"These are very rare. If you find one, you have to pay the price." But you pay an even greater price if one finds you.

I used to work for an avionics contractor. It’s interesting how similar this is to modern hardware … yet also very different. Everything has FPGAs with 16-layer conformal-coated boards. It all has a 1553/1760 bus with expensive parts and a lot of redundancy (compared to consumer stuff). But look at all those ribbon cables and interfaces! In 2007 we were already working on 16Gb fibre interfaces because the F-35 needed the bandwidth. But many years before that we were making missiles with a lot more resistance to EMI than this appears to have. But it’s a funny mix of new and old. I used to have to look up specs in manuals from 1973.

It's a 1980s design. Everything used was the absolute state of the art at the time, and from what I read there were a lot of problems with it. Even the most modern version has unresolved issues. The biggest part on the board with the DSP is most likely a TMS34010, a general-purpose 32-bit CPU with special graphics instructions which was just going into production back when this was being developed. The IDT parts on a few of the other boards are most certainly dual-port RAMs and the VLSI chips will be custom glue logic.

This really proves that the missile knows where it is.

Random but aesthetically I really love the big multi-chip era of computer hardware. Just looks so interesting.

The "sensor" is a javelin rate gyro probably made by marconi. It contains flourocarbon fluid and gemstone bearings. The pink coating at 6:13 is beryllium oxide and is toxic like asbestos.

* The pink stuff gluing the metal plate to the carbon fiber body tube is heat transfer paste. * Those large VLSI parts are gate array parts rather than FPGAs. Gate arrays are midway between full-custom parts and FPGAs. VLSI used to make gate array chips where the silicon and maybe 1 or two metal layers were standardized, but the top couple of layers of metal were customized. So for the price of taping out (and making masks for) two metal layers, you could get a part with 100x the gate count of an FPGA, without having to pay the full cost (and manufacturing delay) of a full-custom 3-5 metal layer part. * Hardly any heat sinks! Most of this stuff didn't run long enough to get hot. Must of been a PITA to debug, since it probably got pretty hot during a debug session.

wow! Crazy expensive stuff. Definitely open the sensor - I assume it's a gyro/accelerometer of some sort

A rare glimpse into a marvel of engineering that few people can ever truly appreciate. Please, do more of these!

I was qualified in these back in my military days. After discharging I started a career in software engineering. I always wanted to understand the key components in the guidance system. Thank you for this.

Very impressive. I love the aesthetic of purple ceramic and gold top ICs.

I used to work for a precious metal recovery company and can tell you, those gold plated chips and edge connectors make these boards [as with most old military electronics] worth a fortune! Modern boards/chips are gold plated measured in microns... old military equipment were absolutely lacquered in gold

Nice find Michel. When only the best will do. Impressive electronics board and mini IMU!

Beautiful circuits. Never thought a missile would carry this level of sophisticated electronics.

Wow congratulations for this find, currently I have nothing better than Sidewinder rollerons on my watch list ! All the golden parts are space grade quality, all that for a single use device, how wastefull war is.

Tbh this is the kind of content i watch youtube for

I'm french and i understand perfectly what you say in english. Curious. Thanks for the video, it's so beautiful !

Best Amazon product unboxing ever.

I had a professor that said he worked for a DoD contractor. He said they would calculate the memory requirements by the max memory allocation per second and multiply it by the max possible run time. Memory leak? No problem.

American here with hands on experience in military electronic parts supply (night vision parts specifically). I'd recommend everyone saving this video. Nice on covering the serial too. Theres a dumb law (ITAR) we have that defines electronics (even well known decades old ones) as "arms" and must not be shared with foreign nationals (including allies) unless it has State Dept. approval. Since Google is an American company and we don't own any of what we ever upload, KZfaq may be forced to "bend the knee" to our "competent" (when it wants to be) gov't at some point (if it gets popular enough). Just wanted to point that out. I'm no lawyer but thats what I've always been told. Regardless I like this content. Thank you.

Fascinating, I used to service the launchers (FCE) and training computers (analogue - op amps performing calculus) in the 80s, and it’s predecessor (blowpipe) but never got to see ordinance though 👍

That thick PCB will have loads of circuit tracks, making a reverse engineering project near impossible - but I'm sure someone somewhere will have done that. Great video, thank you Michel.

The guidance section on it's own is not regarded to be a weapon, but the seeker section is !

So calculations on this whole board had to be faster than the missile itself. Quite impressive for that era.

What a great find Michel! well done, Isn't it sad all that beautiful engineering for a destructive cause

How interesting.. I lost my last Javelin missile and now this turns up on my favourite tear down channel 🤔

Purée ! C'est de la belle électronique ! Ce sont des bijoux ! Merci pour le partage !

Absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much for this video, all the components and board arrangements are typical 90's high tech. My old IBM thinkpads are just like that, full of boards atop other boards full of big custom chips and components. 😊

Great video! That was so high end cutting edge stuff and crammed in that, I bet just manufacturing the carbon fiber shell made a few people tens of millions.

I've been watching your channel for a few years and it looks like this video really took off for you. Glad to see it and hope it brings you the subs and views you deserve.

Ich bin Eloka und Funkamateur. Ich finde diese Technik echt unglaublich interessant. Aktive Radar Steuerung, militärisches GPS, Wärmebild Auswertung, Flugsteuerung, ein Speicher für die Flug-Map.

Of course! Thats why I have those bits in my mega assortment, the javelin missle screwdriver tips! How could they forget the javelin missle screwdriver bits!

It's amazing the design details and electronics package that goes into these missiles to support their very, very brief operational life!

This is wild, but 100% true: my dad designed the aluminum assembly that holds the high-power transistors on the back end on the "C block" version.

OMG, it is so interesting. so brilliant design! looking forward to seeing inside the gyro sensor too. thanks.

beautiful analysis. not just the time to design the hardware, but imagine the time it took to write and validate all that code -> DSPs/fpga/etc. - for something that lives a few minutes, if that.

c'est juste dingue de trouver de tels appareils , un grand merci pour le partage c'est toujours un grand plaisir.

Imagine all this is made at the same time as consumers were able to first time see a 16bit Intel 286 CPU.

I am amazed you got this fella to tear down.

Ta chaine est juste extraordinaire ! Merci pour ce bijou ! ^_^

wow ! thanks for taking the time to show us this - really fascinating

As always awesome teardown and explanation Michel. Is there a possibility to shot some good resolution photos of the entire board.

They did a wonderful engineering job.

Many thanks for the video. Beside electronics made to highest standards, the most interesting part is the cost of the missile at around $78,000, that's incredibly high for such part made in series of tens of thousands or more. So this is how weapons manufacturers and lobby get extremely rich.

It's a piece of art for electronics engineers.

Very interesting, thanks a lot for posting! "You must ensure the missile goes to the target and not in your garden." - made my day=) I am curious about Part 2, and yes, I'd love an analysis / deep dive into the 64x64 Infrared Imaging Sensor and ADC specifically. Essentially, the sensors first stage. Maybe some aspects of the actors section as well. 330MOPS, 60MFLOPS in the DSP .. ok;) FPGAs proc power .. no idea. I guess all the processing magic will be buried in the bitstreams (ROMs, FPGAs, DSPs ..), hard to extract or analyze, so I'm not waiting for a Javelin emulator for Android soon;)

The missile knows where it is at all times

Very interesting. For me the most valuable parts at the OMA2541 op amps. You can make a linear power supply or an audio amp with them. All other transistors and op amps can be reused for linear applications. They are high quality for sure.

This is a very unusual video. On many levels, but still informative.

I love your Accent! and very interesting video, this is something very unusual to see. and a great find indeed! thank you, Mon ame! 😀

Really cool to see one of these up close. Thanks for the video... I won't ask where it came from. (Honestly, it may have had a flaw in it, hence why it still exist. )

So interesting the flat cables are just on the outside like that.

Now I understand how that military chip manufacturer was able to create their own graphics card 3DFX out of nowhere and bring it to market. These missiles are basically flying webcams with video processors on them guiding the missile to the infrared/heat target.

depressing how much effort and complexity we put into weapons of destruction

That "multi sensor" gyro is likely ITAR grade! I looked up the Emcore price list for NON-ITAR grade fiber optic gyro cylinders. the high end is ~$45K for ONE, if you buy 200+ quantity they will give you discount to ~$35K each. (non-ITAR)

LDM #355: Patriot MIM-104F PAC-3 missile guidance computer - Part 1: teardown

impotant question is "can it run doom?"

This is 40 year old weapons made back when the USSR was collapsing.

Never seen all this details , Thanks for sharing. All sophisticated electronics will be gone in seconds Phew.

Smart design to have the charges burn through the electronic guidance and triggers fractions of seconds before the target gets it. Liquidate the most sensitive technology, in the primary action.

Thank you. Very informative. -Scientist from Iran

Great video - as always! This breakthrough digital technology is not as fun to reverse engineer as analog technology. What's surprising is that the main shaped charge and engine are so small. Gryroscope - what I can tell you - go for it.

After the video from @perepolox shooting Javelin, it is no surprise that its electronics is very similar to those in modern PC video cards.

Très intéressant. Oui oui, Il faut l'ouvrir, ce capteur !

i really enjoyed this. thank you Michel

The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is - whichever is greater - it obtains a difference or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the missile from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position that it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is is now the position that it wasn't, and if follows that the position that it was is now the position that it isn't. In the event that the position that the position that it is in is not the position that it wasn't, the system has acquired a variation. The variation being the difference between where the missile is and where it wasn't. If variation is considered to be a significant factor, it too may be corrected by the GEA. However, the missile must also know where it was. The missile guidance computer scenario works as follows: Because a variation has modified some of the information that the missile has obtained, it is not sure just where it is. However, it is sure where it isn't, within reason, and it know where it was. It now subtracts where it should be from where it wasn't, or vice versa. And by differentiating this from the algebraic sum of where it shouldn't be and where it was, it is able to obtain the deviation and its variation, which is called error.

Thank u for this very cool teardown!

This is a freakin' fortune in gold and IC's. No wonder these systems are pricey as hell 😂 Artwork of engineering.

I would blueprint that whole thing and make many copies of it to share with my friends... IF I had any friends...

Imagine what they can have now as a top secret now if this was designed in 1986...

It amazes me what you can find on KZfaq 😅

Such an amazing find! There’s actual real gold in those components! Amazing stuff; the components look like mil-spec radiation hardened devices, like the same components you’d use that makes up a rover to be sent off to Mars! No expense spared in this unit (because…thank you tax payers!). However, it’s a shame all of the engineering put into that, along with extremely expensive components…to exist as a single-use subassembly!

Neat to see. I've been curious to see the electronics as well as what makes them so expensive. (As a side note, as an American, I don't know if I could have made this video without a knock on the door, or being put on some list 😛)

The best youtube content ever ! merci

5/10 on repairability scale. Still better than iPhone 15

I am impressed, I thought this javelin would be much simpler/rugged, and that s pretty advanced for 1996

This OMA2541 op amp, it is TI OPA541 repackaged into TO can (two pcs).

Превосходно, отлично!!!! Еще показали и другие элементы. Ну например рулевые приводы и другое!!!!

Рай для аффинажа, Arduino DIY and home pet project. Thank you Ukraine for make this teardown vidio possible. Waiting for f-16 teardown.

Если ты не обманул, и это действительно платы от Джавелина, то большое тебе спасибо, добрый человек. Интересно было взглянуть на электронику зарубежных боевых ракет.

This is fantastic video to see such weapon so closely....

Awesome PCBs. It's sad to see that usualy that high quality electronic assembly is only working for a few minutes and then usually scrificing itself.

Amazing craftsmanship! Thank you for sharing this👍

This sensor looks a lot like a dynamically tuned gyro (DTG). If so, there must be two of them.

One of the best videos I've ever seen on KZfaq. Who knows, maybe one day you will show us a Himars teardown !

Thank-you. Great teardown vid. The boards and basemount IC's appear to be more modern than '80's vintage. The metal (non-ferrous?) bulkhead is both a heatsink for the opamps, trim ballast and eventually part of the EFP jet? The metal cylinder appears to be either a proton precession magnetometer or magnetic induction sensor for detecting proximity to the target vehicle. BTW: See if you scratch a few spare chips for the Ivans to keep their wash-machines spinning. All the best from Namibia.

magnifique accent anglais ^^ ! c'est super je comprend tout. Vidéo très intéressante, je m'abonne de suite ! Merci Michel !!

I've wanted a peek inside a Javelin for years, very nice. Perhaps it was explained and I missed it, why are there ribbon cables extending out of the side of the airframe? Is it perhaps a testing/debug model?

I love the way you say "here" it reminds me to arnold swarchenegger and the terminator

As expected, the guidance hardware has micro processors from Texas Instruments, the same company that makes our college calculators

Wow that Missle must have been veryyy close to its expatriation date. The style of TI-Gold cap chips - Do they still use those on modern military systems? Those chips, the VLSI glue logic on the rear - perhaps this missile was manufactured in the 1990s - it does not have that many modern components inside it which is probably why this video still exists. The sensor I think is a proximity fuse. I love military electronics, its a thing of beauty

I can't believe there are D-sub connectors in there. Seems like this whole assembly could be optimized with a Raspberry Pi 5, weights cut down to 10%, motor and cost decreased accordingly, explosive increased, etc. Depending on the sample rate for the control system, the FPGAs may not even be necessary. There are some Pi designs with the official RPi camera that are something like 600 frames per second I believe. But I get it, probably not much open source tech in such a weapon. Very interesting teardown. Now get some Aqua Reggia and harvest the Gold lol.

Something so beautiful, relatively "low cost" made to be vaporized. I wonder how million-dollar missiles are built.

Looks like they made sure no one recovered the guidance system. The main charge would mess it up pretty bad.

This is really an interesting device, I don’t know what I’m going to do with components, Video is great. Than you v much indeed.