Thrust Vectoring

Thrust vectoring, also called thrust vector control, is the ability of an aircraft, rocket or other vehicle to redirect the thrust from its engines or motors away from the vehicle's centerline in order to control its attitude or angular velocity. Rockets and missiles rely on it as their primary means of steering once they climb above the atmosphere, where aerodynamic control surfaces no longer have air to act on, while aircraft use it to supplement conventional control surfaces and to gain maneuvers or vertical and short takeoff and landing performance that a fixed-nozzle design cannot match. Vehicles achieve it through gimbaled engines or nozzles, injection of propellant into the exhaust stream, small vernier thrusters, or exhaust vanes placed in the jet stream, with some systems able to deflect thrust through as much as ninety degrees. Robert Goddard used exhaust vanes and gimbaled engines on his rockets in the 1930s, Nazi Germany's V-2 rocket steered with graphite vanes in its exhaust, and the Harrier jump jet became the first operational fighter to use thrust vectoring for vertical takeoff and landing.