DSMAC- The Terminal Guidance System on the Tomahawk Cruise Missile

Join us for a live event at the Fuge in Warminster, PA for a presentation by one of the co-inventors of the Digital Scene Matching Area Correlator, or DSMAC, which was used as part of the guidance system for the Tomahawk cruise missile and proved itself successfully during the first Gulf War. 

To listen to the livestream, you must be on our email distribution list. Email us at mail@ColdWarHistory.org to be included. Zoom link will only be shared on the date of the program. Zoom line opens at 7pm ET and program will promptly start at 7:30pm ET. Thank you.

Event address:
The Fuge
780 Falcon Circle
Warminster, PA 18974

The lecture will be held in “The Lab”. Enter the building from the Tranquility Brewing Co. entrance and proceed down the hallway ahead of you, past the curtains to the first door on the left.

++++++++++++++++

About Jim Sobek

James S. Sobek, P.E, is a senior accident analyst at Wolf Technical Services, Inc. in Indianapolis, Indiana.  

Following high school graduation in 1960, Jim joined the Navy to get an education in electronics. After Fire Control Technician A and C schools at Great Lakes Naval Training Center, he served for three years aboard the USS William V. Pratt (DLG-13), a guided missile destroyer. His primary work there involved operation and maintenance of the Terrier missile guidance radars. His ship was part of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis naval blockade.

After honorable discharge from the Navy in 1964, Jim enrolled at Thiel College in Greenville, Pennsylvania, and in June 1968, he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Physics. Jim also has additional training from UCLA and Purdue University. 
On graduation from Thiel, Jim was hired by the Naval Avionics Center in Indianapolis in the Missile Guidance Branch.

For the next 20 years, most of his work was in developing an electro-optical missile guidance system known as the Digital Scene Matching Area Correlator, or DSMAC (pronounced D-smack) that ultimately became part of the guidance system for the Navy’s Tomahawk cruise missile. He is a co-patent holder on DSMAC, which was awarded for his development of much of the optical hardware and aerial image processing technology currently used in that system. In 1981, Jim and two other men at the Naval Avionics Center were honored for their invention of that system.
Jim left the Naval Avionics Center in 1988 to take up a second career at Wolf Technical Services, Inc., a forensics and design engineering firm in Indianapolis, Indiana. During the next 36 years, he analyzed personal injury and property damage accidents that involved optics, lighting, and visibility. 

In 2007, Jim formed Clearly Visible Presentations, LLC. The mission of the company is to teach the principles and techniques of optics, lighting, visibility, and digital imaging to technical professionals world-wide.