At this year's Paris Air Show, advanced weapon and space systems company Alliant Techsystems, Inc. (ATK) displayed a model of its proposed High Speed Surface Weapon (HSSW), powered by a thermally-throated ramjet the company hasbeen developing for about two years. The HSSW in effect competes with several government-funded hypersonic-strike weapons, such as RATTLR (Real-Time Targeting at Long Range) and Hy-Fly. ATK claims that its internally-funded design will be substantially less expensive. Based on surface tests, it expects its ramjet to reach Mach 5 using conventional materials, and to reach hypersonic (scramjet) speeds using more exotic ones. All of these weapons are intended to place a 500pound warhead at a range of about 250 nautical miles, and all are sized for firing from MK 41 vertical-launcher tubes. Like its competitors, HSSW would use GPS/ INS guidance, with a data link for midcourse and man-in-the-loop updates.
ATK sees the HSSW as part of a conventional-strike triad, the long-range element of which is the new conventionalwarhead ballistic missile the company is helping to develop. It would be used against distant time-critical targets. The HSSW would offer similar rapid response against shorter-range targets. The other element of the triad would be slower longrange conventional weapons like Tactical Tomahawk and the Standoff Land Attack Missile-Expanded Response.
In the company's view, the HSSW will beat out its competitors because it is inherently much less expensive (comparable to, say, Tactical Tomahawk rather than to the estimated $2 to $3 million of the current more exotic alternatives). It was shown with a vertical-launch booster, but it could also be launched by an airplane or a submarine. Given funding, HSSW could fly within about two years.
At present the only government funding ATK has for the missile is a small Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency contract for the higher-energy solid-fuel booster it needs to get to ramjet ignition speed. However, it does not need the same initial speed as a scramjet. It would be boosted to 50,000 feet, then ignite and reach supersonic speed. Once flying at high speed, it could dive down to low altitude, although for long range higher altitudes would be better.
Radical Change
The HSSW is an example of the radical way in which the missile world is changing. In the early years of missile-building, the system aspects of the weapon, such as guidance, were far more difficult than the aerodynamics. Although many missiles were made by aircraft companies, organizations which had begun in the radar world, such as Hughes Aircraft and Raytheon, became dominant.
Now, however, the system aspects of any individual missile are becoming less unique, as most land-attack weapons share the same GPS/INS guidance techniques and, in the future, common data links. One consequence for operators is that stovepiped missile systems are dying in favor of common command systems that can choose which weapon to fire at which target, simply assigning the weapon by programming its GPS/INS system. Of course the missile design still has to translate position information into commands to its aerodynamic surfaces, but the huge investment in individual systems for individual missiles is rapidly disappearing.
A company like ATK can exploit this change by emphasizing the aerodynamic and propulsion aspects of missiles. Perhaps the clearest indication of what has happened has been the story of GPSguided bombs, initially JDAMs. There is very little connection between the bomb and the aircraft that delivers it. The airplane computer inserts target coordinates into the bomb, and the aircraft fire control system has to know enough about the ballistics of the bomb to release it within the appropriate "basket" around the target. However, most of the effort in the system goes into finding out where the target is, and in bringing the aircraft into position. Any of a variety of weapons can be inserted into such a system. For example, there is no particular reason that JDAM bombs have to be released at very short ranges. Using a wing kit, such a bomb can glide 30 miles or more, and accuracy will not be affected, because GPS precision does not depend on how far the bomb is from the launch point.
The U.S. Navy is currently experimenting with a GPS-wing combination by means of which a lightweight ASW torpedo can be released at high altitude, far from a target area. One virtue of this particular technique is that low-altitude stress on a patrol plane airframe can be minimized, an important advantage for P-3s that have been showing their age for some time. Too, some manufacturers are now offering serf-defense missiles for submarines. An airplane with a stand-off torpedo would probably be out of their range.
Anti-air weapons obviously cannot share a simple geographical target picture, but in effect they are not too different. The Aegis system maintains a track picture, and missiles are commanded into homing baskets near their targets. At one time, only the SM-2 missile could work with the Aegis system. Now, however, the later version of NATO Seasparrow can share the track picture and the illuminator. When Aegis was created, the emphasis was on the remarkable radar that provided the track picture. Now the emphasis is much more on that picture, which can be created by multiple sources of information, such as the Cooperative Engagement Capability data link.
The issue is not how a particular radar works, but rather on how any one of a variety of missiles can exploit the tactical picture associated with the system. Several foreign systems operate in analogous fashion. Examples are the European PAAMS System (various Aster missiles) and even a South African missile called Umkhonto, which has now been bought by Finland and, very recently, Sweden. Given the track picture and the commands, missiles have a variety of ways of finding their targets within the baskets the systems assign: semi-active radar in Aegis, active radar in PAAMS, IR (with a later active radar option) in Umkhonto. It would not be outlandish to see in these data-linked missiles an air defense equivalent to the universal GPS bomb (which will often have a data link for updates). It would seem to follow that in the air defense missile world, too, the roles of airframe developer and system developer will diverge. That was the case when the U.S. Army selected the missile used in the PAC-3 version of the Patriot system; it has no relation whatever to the original Patriot missile, but the surrounding system is the same.
Contracting a Good Idea?
All of this raises an interesting question. Who develops the big systems within which the missiles and the platforms operate? In the distant past, the developer was usually the service; that was certainly the case with the U.S. Navy. However, by the 1960s there was an increasing feeling that only a specialized electronics company could develop fully integrated systems. The leader in this trend was the U.S. Air Force, which began issuing system development contracts in the 1950s. It associated these contracts with leaps in technology. Now the system project has become quite common. In recent years it has been associated with dramatic changes in the style of operations, which are sometimes called network-centric. Thus the U.S. Army let a system contract to Boeing for its Future Combat System, in effect calling on the company to redesign the Army. Similarly, the Coast Guard let a system contract for its Deepwater reconstruction to Lockheed Martin. .
Now questions are being asked. In June the Government Accountability Office issued a report questioning the wisdom of contracting with any private entity for a redesigned Army. Surely those in the Army have some idea of what has worked in the past, and thus should have a dominant role in redesign. In particular, network-centric concepts often concentrate on selecting and engaging targets, but in ground warfare occupying territory seems to be both vital and outside such concepts.
In the case of the Coast Guard, serious questions have been raised about the ships and craft being bought as part of the troubled Deepwater Program. That Deepwater is far more a revolution in command and control has been obscured, partly because platforms generally focus attention, whereas command concepts seem abstract and even meaningless. That may be extremely unfortunate, because network-centric concepts offer real advantages if they are properly understood. Unfortunately, the level of abstraction that seems to rule in discussions of this type of warfare precludes the necessary level of visceral understanding.
Also on display in Paris was a stealthylooking Chinese UAV called Dark Sword. No details were available, but the design suggests increasing sophistication on the part of Chinese designers. One surprise of the show was that neither the Chinese nor the Russians were showing off missiles (the Russians did have some models of air defense systems, but none was particularly new). Instead, both countries seemed to concentrate on aircraft and space launchers.