Video System Can Redirect Stray Missles

The US Navy has developed a new missile guidance technology that it hopes will cut the number of casualties caused when its missiles are wrongly targeted or go astray.

The smartest bombs still hit the wrong targets Photo: CORBIS The technology allows a commander to redirect a missile that appears to be heading for the wrong target, as a result of malfunction, or because the target moved or was wrongly identified in the first place.

This happens all too often. During the Kosovo conflict of the late 1990s, a radar-homing missile intended for a radar site in Serbia strayed 50 kilometres into neighbouring Bulgaria.

And in August 1998, US cruise missiles missed Al-Qaida targets and landed on Pakistan instead. If the troops who fired the rogue missiles had been able to intercept and redirect them, they could have avoided risking damage and "friendly fire" casualties.

"Increasingly in the West we want to fight from out of harm's way," says Andrew Brookes, at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, UK. That means launching missiles increasingly far away from the target. But as the distance to the target increases, so do the chances of the target's situation changing.

The new system, confusingly known as automatic target acquisition (ATA), allows a human to intervene if the missile appears to be going astray. It is already being fitted to the US Navy's SLAMER missiles, which in many respects work like a smaller version of a cruise missile.

SLAMERs are normally fired from planes outside enemy lines, and then fly in close to the ground, finding their own target using GPS satellite positioning signals and terrain recognition. ATA marks a sea change in this attitude of using "fire and forget" weapons, says Brookes.

ATA-equipped SLAMERs carry an infrared video camera that sends pictures back to the plane that launched the missile. The pilot will see if the missile is heading for the wrong target and redirect it.

But the missiles do not always need the pilot: they can select their own targets if communication with the aircraft is lost. By comparing the images from an onboard infrared camera with images provided by mission planners they can locate small targets in a cluttered environment.

"We do not tout it to be an autonomous capability because we need the pilots to be the man in the loop," says Carl Reiber, who manages the ATA programme at the Naval Air Station in Patuxent River, Maryland. That is because in autonomous flight, the missile is back to "fire and forget" mode that the ATA system is trying to get away from.

I know that the crew of a US submarine was real nervous about being a target in tests of whether a missile [and I have no idea of whit type, nor whether ship or aircraft launched] could discriminate between the foreign sub it was programmed to hit and their sub. The *discrimination* feature was based on passively identifying engineering and recognition features.

Note that even though a training warhead was presumably utilized, the unexpended fuel aboard a large missile can itself be explosive and contributory to a blast, and in a vessel like a sub, can very quickly burn out all the air inside if it penetrates unless all interior bulkhead doors are sealed. Accordingly, not only is an interruption in the firing circuit required, but also a positive command destruct feature, hopefully piggybacked with the abovementioned capability to assume a course away from the intended target.

FYI, in 4 test shots at the sub, it was automatically identified as a *friendly* and the attack was aborted 4 times out of the 4. That's not good enough in my book, but it's a good start. -archy-/-

Okay, took the easy way out- hit google:

The AGM-84H SLAM-ER (Standoff Land-Attack Missile, Expanded Response) is a development of the current AGM-84E SLAM which is in use today with several air and sea-based platforms of the US Navy. The original SLAM was a land-attack development of the highly-successful AGM-84 Harpoon antiship missile. The SLAM-ER originated in the early and mid-1990's, with the USN giving the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) contract to McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) in March 1995. The first flight of the missile took place on 18 March 1997. The flight invovled the launch of a SLAM-ER from an F/A-18C Hornet, and the missile met all the goals for that initial first flight, i.e., deployment of its wings, engine start-up, satellite acquisition, etc. A total of 13 flights will comprise the flight test program, and 8 flights have already taken place. The SLAM-ER was approved by the Navy for initial low-rate production in April 1997. In May 1998 the SLAM achieved a major milestone by successully hitting a moving target. The missile travelled more than 40 miles before hitting a moving ship off the coast of California. Currently, the USN has ordered 135 SLAM-ERs, and Boeing will also upgrade all of the Navy's current 600+ AGM-84Es to SLAM-ER standard between FY1997 and FY2001.

Externally, the most notable improvement between the SLAM and the SLAM-ER is that the SLAM-ER incorporates a pair of deployable wings which increase the range of the missile, and improve performance compared to the baseline AGM-84E. The warhead is encased in titanium to increase penetration of hardened or buried targets. The AGM-84H incorporates a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver which will enable extreme navigational precision by updating the missile's onboard INS (Inertial Navigation System) while in-flight. At the nose of the missile is the Imaging Infrared (I2R) seeker, which will identify targets during flight. A planned improvement to be incorporated into all SLAM-ERs is the Advanced Target Acquisition (ATA) capability, which is currently being developed. An ATA-equipped SLAM-ER will take the images it sees with the I2R sensor during the terminal (last 5 miles or so) phase of flight, and compare them with the images of the target stored in the missile's onboard computer. This will be useful for targeting environments which are cluttered and confusing, such as an urban environment.

Another reason the SLAM-ER will be a force to be reckoned with is its "man-in-the-loop" features. The SLAM-ER is equipped with a secure datalink to its launch aircraft, and the pilot sees the image being picked up by the SLAM-ER's infrared sensor. If he chooses to do so, the pilot can freeze the image he gets in the cockpit, then select a specific aimpoint on the target, instructing the missile to impact there. This is helpful when the target has a critical aimpoint, but there is no distinguishing IR signature to go with it. It also enables the pilot to designate new targets of opportunity while in-flight, such as mobile missile launchers. Another interesting SLAM-ER feature is that it shares a 70% software commonality with the JSOW (Joint-Standoff Weapon) and the JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition)

Pilot reaction to the SLAM-ER has been overwhelmingly positive. USN Lt. Cdr. Wade Knudson, F-18 pilot, describes the SLAM-ER as "...a significant improvement over SLAM -- it's a totally different weapon in terms of capabilities." Knudson also describes the SLAM-ER mission planning: "Mission planning for the SLAM-ER has improved over baseline SLAM. We still have the concept of the SLAM smart checklist, but it's vastly improved over the old days of spending hours using templates and charts. Now the system is faster, easier and more accurate." USN Lt. Burr describes the the man-in-the-loop feature of the SLAM-ER as "Perhaps the most significant improvement in SLAM-ER over SLAM..."

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.