It is one of the light missiles being devised for urban combat scenarios
By RICHARD R. BURGESS, Managing Editor
New innovations in precision weapons are fostering the development of small, highly accurate and lethal missiles that can be carried by infantry units or mounted on small unmanned aerial vehicles.
The new class of missiles being developed foretell fundamental improvements in the future ability of U.S. forces to target precisely in an urban environment, such as a town in Iraq. That is a key advantage, given the desire and political pressure to avoid collateral or unintended damage and casualties that is increasingly ingrained in the technology and tactics developed for U.S. forces.
Miniaturization also would allow a single Marine to carry as many as six missile rounds under certain conditions, greatly magnifying the firepower available to Marine ground units. Currently, two Marines are required to carry the Javelin system — the smallest fire-and-forget missile currently used in the Corps — with one transporting the launcher and the other carrying three 11.8-pound missiles. In addition, the new classes of precision weapons generally cost substantially less than the larger missiles and bombs now in use.
Precision tactical missiles have been fielded with U.S. forces for more than two decades, primarily as antitank and bunker-busting weapons. However, their expense often makes it difficult to justify their use against relatively low-value soft targets such as buildings and light vehicles.
Many tactical missiles are man-portable, but their size limits the amount of rounds a man can carry and makes them impractical for use by highly mobile, stealthy special operations forces.
Existing precision missiles such as the Hellfire have been fired successfully in combat from a large unmanned aerial vehicle, the Predator, but at 100 pounds they are too big and heavy for the smaller unmanned aerial vehicles — such as the Army’s Shadow — in extensive use today with the Marine Corps and Army.
One example of an effort to break through these barriers is the new Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II (APKWS II) being developed by BAE Systems for Army and Marine Corps helicopter gunships. The APKWS II is a conversion of the Hydra 70, a common small, low-cost aircraft ballistic rocket, into a precision tactical missile.
An earlier effort, APKWS I, “was curtailed for issues with cost, schedule and system performance in extreme environmental conditions,” said Dan O’Boyle, spokesman for the Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala.
Built by General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products Division, the Hydra 70 is the current iteration of a 2.75-inch diameter unguided rocket that entered service during the 1950s as a weapon for interceptors to shoot down other aircraft and later adapted as an air-to-ground rocket for close air support of ground troops. The rocket is equipped with a variety of warheads and tail-mounted folding fins that spring open as it is launched from a firing pod. The rockets are carried by a helicopter in multiple-round pods and can be fired singly or in salvos.
The Hydra 70 also has been tested on the Fire Scout unmanned helicopter under development for the Navy and Army.
Hydra 70s can be used as an area-suppression weapon by firing large numbers of them, enough to inundate a football field, said Frank Wilson, director of precision targeting at BAE Systems. But they also can be fired individually at specific targets, such as a building occupied by an enemy.
“We can take out point targets,” said Maj. Kevin M. Hudson, a combat-experienced Marine AH-1W Super Cobra helicopter pilot and currently director of aviation air-to-ground weapons at Headquarters Marine Corps. “But the accuracy is based solely on the individual aviator’s ability to shoot them. The more you shoot them the better you are.”
Super Cobra pilots use a target reticle — a sight in the head-up display on the windshield — to aim the unguided rockets. The pilot must take winds, airspeed and aircraft altitude into consideration before firing a rocket.
“Shooting [unguided] rockets is an art,” Hudson said. “APKWS takes the art out of it.”
The APKWS II — being developed under a $96.1 million system development and demonstration contract from the Army — involves the installation of a guidance segment between the Hydra 70’s warhead and rocket motor section.
“It’s a very simple integration to an existing weapon,” said Dick Venuti, BAE’s program manager for APKWS II. The new missile is adaptable to the AH-1W and the Army’s AH-64 Apache helicopter without modification to the helicopters’ systems.
The guidance segment includes four small wings that spring open when the missile leaves its launch tube. Mounted on the leading edge of each wing is BAE’s new Distributed Aperture Semi-Active Laser Seeker (DASALS), a tiny “eyeball,” a sensor that receives laser energy reflected from the target by the helicopter’s laser designation system and steers the missile to the target.
“Most [other] seekers have a nose-mounted collection device,” said Venuti. With the DASALS design, “we never had to change the fuse design or the ordnance package in any way. We didn’t have to interfere with the nose at all.”
The DASALS, also being integrated in the Army’s Precision-Guided Mortar Munition, is compatible with the laser targeting systems on the Marine Corps’ Super Cobra and Army’s Apache helicopter without modification, according to Wilson.
He declined to release the specifications of the APKWS II, but noted that the military requirement mandated a missile that cost less than $10,000. The unit cost of the Hellfire is approximately $65,000.
The unguided Hydra 70 costs between $700 and $2,500, depending on the warhead type, according to O’Boyle. BAE expects to conduct developmental testing of the APKWS II by the end of 2006. Northrop Grumman will assist in the testing of the missile.
“The reason we shoot so many Hellfires in the current war on terrorism is because of its [high] probability of hit,” Hudson said. “Instead of expending a very expensive Hellfire to take out a soft target — something less than a tank — we can use a much cheaper rocket and get the same results. APKWS gives us a higher probability of hit and we’re going to minimize collateral damage.”
“We’ve been searching for high-kill/low-collateral damage weapons,” he said. “The technology here now is affording us systems such as APKWS, where the weapon will track to the target and have the desired effect and minimize collateral damage effects.”
Avoidance of collateral damage also is a goal in the development of an even smaller missile called Spike (not to be confused with an Israeli-built missile of the same name) being developed by the Naval Air Warfare Center’s Weapons Division at China Lake, Calif., said the missile’s originator, Steve Felix, Spike project manager at China Lake.
Felix said his goal is to produce a system with a 5-pound launcher and three 5-pound missiles, which would add 20 pounds to the 85-pound load (without missiles) a Marine infantryman typically carries. With a lighter day pack, a Marine could carry six rounds.
The light weight of Spike also makes it a potential weapon for special operations forces, and it is light enough to be deployed on small 300-pound-class unmanned aerial vehicles.
“We’re trying to break the paradigm of guided weapons that historically have been large, heavy and expensive,” Felix said, “[by going] in the other direction, to give reasonable capability at absolutely the lowest cost that we can manage.”
The 25-inch-long, 2.25-inch diameter Spike is a 5.3-pound missile with a 1-pound warhead. Spike is designed to be fired from a tube-shaped shoulder launcher and locked onto the target with an electro-optical sensor in a fire-and-forget mode. The missile has a modular design to allow upgrades without redesigning the missile.
Spike’s accuracy allows for a small warhead, the “minimum required to do the job,” Felix said. “We’re shooting for low-collateral damage. We really only want to blow up the one thing we hit, the one truck, the one car with a terrorist, the single room with the sniper in it or the small boat that’s weaving around shipping in a port.”
At $5,000 per missile, Spike is the lowest-cost missile in the U.S. arsenal, according to Felix. The current Javelin antitank missile costs approximately $78,000 per missile.
Use of commercial-off-the-shelf technology has kept the cost of Spike low. Felix said the electro-optical sensor costs only $35. But a missile of this size was not possible until a micro-electromechanical acceleration sensor — an electronic component that is the heart of the guidance system — was reduced to the size of an apple.
Spike has been development since 1998, initially using internal research and development funds. The Marine Corps and the Special Operations Command also provided funding, bringing the total to $21 million, according to Felix.
Teamed with China Lake are ATK Thiokol and DRS Technologies, which are assessing the feasibility of manufacturing the missile in large volume. Spike has been successfully fired against stationary targets and will be tested against a moving target such as a truck later this year.
The Navy is contributing $3.8 million toward development of APKWS II and is planning an additional $7 million for testing through 2010. Production is scheduled to begin in fiscal year 2008, with the Navy receiving its first allocation in fiscal year 2009, according to Michelle McBride, guided rockets integrated product team leader at the Navy’s program executive office for strike weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles.
The military expects to procure 72,000 missiles, O’Boyle said.
