Nigel Vinson looks at the factors that apply to the new generation of anti-tank guided weapons systems.
While events on 11 September highlighted the necessity of bolstering homeland defence, it also reinforced the need for rapid deployment on a global scale, confirming the broad tenants of the UK government’s 1998 Strategic Defence Review. The balance of investment decisions within the UK Ministry of Defence are increasingly being weighed by capability solutions that are strategically and tactically deployable, are capable of being upgraded to meet emerging threats or to employ emerging technologies, and offer excellent through-life value for money opportunities.
This logic applies equally to a new generation of anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) systems being procured for the British Army, where considerations such as weight, reliability and through life costs are significant factors weighing the selection process. The first programme likely to reach a main gate decision will be the short-range replacement of the Hunting Engineering LAW 80. The next-generation light anti-armour weapon (NLAW) is a £250-£300m programme to provide some 20,000-24,000 lightweight (less than 12.5kgs) ATGWs designed to kill all armoured vehicles, between 20-600m. It will employ a soft launch (for firing in confined spaces) fire-and-forget attack profile, with the ability to attack secondary targets such as structures and fortifications and is expected in service by 2006.
Two industrial groupings are offering potential NLAW solutions to the MoD. The first is headed by Thales Air Defence, that has linked up with Sweden’s Saab Bofors Dynamics, and UK companies including Raytheon Systems Limited and BAE Systems Avionics, to offer Saab’s MBT-LAW. Sweden has a long history of producing novel ATGW systems, and the MBT-LAW is no exception. Combining features of Saab’s Bill system (the world’s first overfly top attack, or OTA system) with the company’s AT4 confined space (CS) LAW, the MBT-LAW is designed for overfly attack, using a sophisticated proximity fuse designed to fire both pre and main charges at the same point to maximise lethality, or secondary, direct-fire attack, against concealed and bunker-type targets.
If the UK selects the MBT-LAW it is anticipated that the UK’s Defence Procurement Agency (DPA) would manufacture the complete weapon, minus the proximity fuse, for the UK and Swedish armed forces, who also have a requirement for a few thousand systems, as well as for export. UK assembly will be undertaken at Thales’ South Down plant, where the existing Hellfire and Starstreak missiles are manufactured for the UK armed forces and where the future VT1 missile will be produced. Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, in conjunction with MDBA, is offering the Kestrel, a heavily-modified variant of their Predator ATGW, designed to enter volume production this year for the US Marine Corps.
The most significant modification necessary to make Predator compliant with the UK’s requirements has been the inclusion of a direct-fire capability, in this instance from Lockheed Martin’s multi-purpose individual munition/short-range attack weapon. Similarly, Lockheed Martin has exploited previous work undertaken by US company Aerojet on Raytheon’s TOW 2B top-attack warhead, already in extensive use by American and allied armed forces. Again, Kestrel would be assembled in the UK for domestic and possibly international sales.
Many of the companies competing for NLAW are also involved in the UK’s £300m, medium-range, light forces anti-tank guided weapon system (LFATGWS) competition. The original LFATGWS requirement was conceived as a partial replacement for the medium-range Milan 2 system, designed to offer 16 Air Assault Brigade and 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines, as well as selected special forces units, a truly man-portable ATGW system. While the remainder of the British Army was to adopt the medium-range Trigat ATGW, the withdrawal of the UK from the latter programme means the LFATGWS will also replace Milan 2 firing posts within light and mechanised infantry battalions.
With an in-service date of 2005, LFATGWS is expected to comprise some 300 firing posts and 5,000 missiles. Two consortia are competing for the UK contract, that is expected to be announced in mid-2002. Raytheon and Lockheed Martin have received an invitation to tender (ITT) to offer their joint venture, the Javelin ATGW, already in service with the US armed forces, recently selected by Jordan, Lithuania and apparently purchased by an undisclosed foreign government for service in Afghanistan. The Javelin uses a soft-launch, 60-2,500m, fire-and forget missile employing long-wave imaging infra-red (IIR) guidance with a feature based tracker, and a pre-planned improvement programme that could boost range to 4,000m without increasing the systems weight, utilising a more sensitive IIR seeker.
The Javelin system employs a top attack capability (with a tandem warhead for piercing reactive armour) that is designed to engage the more vulnerable roof armour of enemy vehicles, avoiding the thicker frontal armour and the arc in which early generation active defence systems work most effectively. With its top attack profile, the Javelin’s warhead can be smaller, with a calibre of 127mm, and the overall system is correspondingly lighter than more conventional direct attack systems, at around 21.9 kgs. The Javelin retains a direct attack capability, to engage concealed targets.
An ITT also has been received by MBDA, in association with Israel’s Rafael Armament Authority, for the Spike (NT-S) ATGW. Spike, which uses a mid-range imaging infra-red sensor or a charge coupled device, would employ either a fire-and-forget mode between 200-2,500m or a launch, observe and strike capability. The latter, taking missile range out to some 4,000m, uses a trailing fibre-optic link to the controller, allowing some scope for adjusting the aiming point after missile launch and is potentially of more benefit in peace support operations where the implications of faulty target identification are problematic. This implies, of course, that additional user training would need to be conducted and missiles fired in order to qualify gunners with both engagement options, over a dedicated fire and forget system. Spike has a diameter of approximately 110mm, weighs 26kgs, and has been adopted by Singapore and Finland, and the Netherlands has selected the dedicated fire and forget Gill (NT-G) system.
For longer-range engagements, the UK still employs the venerable swingfire system with its approximately 4,000m range on the striker vehicles used by the Royal Armoured Corps. In service since the late 1960s, the swingfire has been updated, but consideration is now being given by the MoD’s Directorate of Equipment Capabilities to replacing it with a more modern and flexible system.
In the short term, a number of possibilities exist: utilising a ground-mounted version of the AGM-114 Hellfire missile currently entering the inventory with the WAH-64D Apache helicopter, or modifying the Brimstone anti-armour weapon (itself a heavily-modified variant of the Hellfire) which is about to enter service with the UK’s Royal Air Force. These systems would have ground-launched ranges of some 8,000-10,000m, although Rafael also offers the 10,000m Dandy (NT-D) within its family of ATGWs.
In the longer term, the UK’s DPA and the US have recently committed £40m towards the concept and technology demonstration phase of the common missile programme, designed to find a longer-term alternative to the TOW and Hellfire family of missiles. Engineered to be compatible with existing TOW launchers (that will not be an important consideration for the UK after the withdrawal of the TOW-armed Lynx helicopters), the system will be designed to engage a wide-array of target arrays, including bunkers, soft-skinned vehicles and buildings as well as the more traditional armoured targets. It is likely that a number of seeker and warhead options would be available. Similarly, the original semi-active laser seeker on the Hellfire has given way to radar sensor technology.
Range of the common missile has been estimated at 10,000-12,000m, although this may well be doubled if fired from airborne platforms such as helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft or uninhabited aerial vehicles. An anticipated in-service date has been given as 2008-10, with an estimated 73,000 missiles being procured for the armed forces of the US and UK alone.
In the longer term, it is likely that precision anti-armour weapons will not necessarily be delivered by direct-fire systems. The award of the indirect fire, precision attack (IFPA) study to BAE Systems by the future artillery weapons systems integrated project team within the DPA indicates that by 2006, a 60km artillery rocket may provide a sufficiently accurate capability, and by 2015 the range could be extended out to 150kms.
This implies a need for far greater integration of the land component than has been necessary before and many recent conflicts have exclusively employed air, ship or submarine-launched precision weapons. Not least, these long-range systems will need to be adequately incorporated into the overall air tasking order. It is likely that over the next decade or so, the development of longer-ranged, ground-launched precision weapons will bring added credibility to the land element of any future military operation, an option that military commanders sorely lacked during recent conflicts.