The U.S. Army is reevaluating its tactical missile program and exploring options
to employ new munitions, in an effort to make its long-range precision weapons
less costly and more relevant to modern warfare.
One pressing priority is to figure out a modernization path for the Army tactical
missile (ATACMS). A panel of senior Army officers—called the Acquisition
Review Council—was expected to meet last month to evaluate the service’s
“deep fires” strategy, including ATACMS.
The service has an aging stockpile of block I missiles that it will either
upgrade or demilitarize. An extended-range version of ATACMS, block IA, is in
production. But the block II, which carries smart submunitions, has not performed
well in recent tests and received poor marks in the operational test and evaluation
annual report for fiscal year 2001.
The TACMS block IIA was supposed to be an extended range variant of the block
II and was to include more advanced submunitions, but the Army cancelled the
program two years ago, citing funding shortages.
The ATACMS block I, which has a range of 165 km, gained fame in the Persian
Gulf War. Launched from the M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System, the block I
missile carries about 900 grenades. The manufacturer, Lockheed Martin Missiles
and Fire Control, in Dallas, delivered 1,650 missiles.
Block IA, with a range of 300 km, has a smaller payload (300 M74 submunitions)
and is guided by GPS satellites. Lockheed made more than 800 block IA systems
for the U.S. Army and international buyers. The production line is scheduled
to shut down by January 2003. The block II missile—in development since
1995—is in low-rate production, but experiencing technical problems with
the munitions.
The block II was to become the delivery system to replace the defunct Tri-Service
Stand-off Attack Missile, cancelled in 1995, as the deep attack carrier for
the brilliant anti-armor technology. The BAT, made by Northrop Grumman Corp.,
is a self-guided submunition that uses on-board sensors to seek, identify, employ
a top-attack engagement profile and destroy moving tanks. It uses an acoustic
sensor to seek out its armor targets and infrared sensors to engage the vehicles.
An improved version of BAT, called P3I, has been in development since 1999.
Like the basic BAT, the P3I also will rely on acoustic sensors to initially
find moving vehicles, but it will use a millimeter wave and imaging infrared
sensor to track the target to impact.
There are 13 submunitions in the ATACMS block II missile. Once dispensed, the
weapons glide to their preprogrammed target area, and each selects a target
within its assigned acoustic segment of the formation. Once a target has been
acquired by the terminal infrared seeker, the weapon guides to terminal impact
and uses a tandem shaped-charge warhead to destroy the vehicle.
The Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation, Tom Christie,
said in his fiscal year 2001 annual report that performance, weather robustness
and system targeting are “areas of concern,” in ATACMS block II.
Three missions were fired, with limited success.
In the first mission, there were no hits. The aim point of the missile was
adjusted to simulate the error in targeting during combat. Winds contributed
to poor performance, said the report, by creating significant background noise,
making difficult the detection of the target by the acoustic sensors.
In a second test, BAT hit one out of two armored personnel carriers. A third
mission was fired against a dispersed array of three moving columns of vehicles.
According to Christie’s report, the BATs miscalculated altitudes and had
other problems, likely caused by turbulent air conditions
BAT reliability, the report noted, is below the required threshold (84 percent
vs. 91 percent).
During tests in fiscal year 2001, the contractor was not able to deliver TACMS
block II missiles with fully functional BATs, said the report. “This year,
two of the five missiles delivered to the range had one BAT test badly.”
Meanwhile, missile firings to date “indicate that the missile will meet
its accuracy requirement.” All 37 BATs fired were successfully dispensed.
Critics of the program complain that the Army, so far, has spent $2 billion
on the BAT submunition and has little to show for that investment.
The Army’s program manager for precision fires, Col. Craig Naudain, declined
to be interviewed for this article.
In defense of the TACMS block II program, an Army source who did not want to
be quoted by name noted that, during the past decade, the service has added
new “desired features” to the BAT, such as the ability to chase
dispersed fast-moving columns of vehicles, that were not reflected in the original
design. “Other things have come along, for which the original BAT was
not designed,” said the source.
The setbacks experienced in the ATACMS block II testing, meanwhile, have vexed
Lockheed officials, who stress that the missile is working well, but the problem
is the submunition. As it turns out, Lockheed has proposed that the Army upgrade
the TACMS with a so-called universal dispenser that could be used to fire BATs
or possibly other submunitions, such as the Lockheed-made LOCAAS. The Low Cost
Autonomous Attack System munition is capable of broad area search, identification,
and destruction of mobile ground targets. It uses a LADAR (laser-radar) sensor
coupled with a multimode warhead and a maneuvering airframe.
The universal dispenser is “one alternative we’ve brought forth
to the Army,” said Ben Collins, manager of business development at Lockheed
Martin. “It’s half the cost of the current block II dispenser system.”
During a recent interview, Collins explained that this dispenser would give
commanders more flexibility, because it would allow them to fire the missile
with fewer than 13 BATs and to substitute the BAT with other munitions, such
as the SADARM, the wide-area munition, the BLU-108, the LOCAAS or even 155mm
or 105mm artillery shells.
The universal dispenser was developed with Lockheed internal funding, said
Collins. The company has received many inquiries about it from other countries,
he added.
Firing a fully loaded ATACMS with 13 BATS is an expensive proposition, at about
$1 million per shot. The ability to load the missile with fewer munitions makes
financial sense, said Collins. “With a reduced payload, your cost goes
down significantly.” When developing a “deep fires” strategy,
a commander may not want to use a 13-BAT payload if the targets are widely dispersed,
for example.
Under the TACMS 2000 program, Lockheed claims to have reduced the cost of each
missile by $100,000, but it’s not clear whether there are any plans to
reduce the cost of the BAT submunitions.
A Northrop Grumman spokesman referred all questions on BAT to the U.S. Army.
The Army source explained that the precision fires program office is committed
to fielding the TACMS block II and BAT, but program officials nonetheless are
seriously considering acquiring Lockheed’s universal dispenser, as part
of a plan to evolve TACMS. The Army, said the source, likes the idea of being
able to dispense fewer that 13 BATs per shot, depending on the target set. The
precision fires office has conducted computer simulations that prove that many
targets only would require six or eight BATs. The Army also favors the notion
of having flexibility to use other types of munitions. However, said the source,
“we don’t know what those will be.”
In recent years, the Army also has been working on two programs to equip TACMS
with a unitary and a penetrator warhead.
The unitary TACMS has a 300 km range and GPS-aided inertial guidance. The warheads
tested so far include the Navy Standoff Land Attack Munition, the Harpoon, the
WAU 23/B and the WDU-18/B bombs. This system would be used primarily as a precision
weapon to strike buildings and bunkers. Lockheed delivered 42 unitary missiles
last year. The company expects to make 24 in 2003 and is hoping that Congress
will appropriate a supplemental fund to add 90 more missiles.
The TACMS penetrator completed a technology demonstration program in 1998,
but is not scheduled for a flight test until September 2003. The Navy-furnished
penetrator would have a range between 140-499 km, depending on the munition,
and would be used against hard and deeply buried targets.
Lockheed officials have proposed that the Army upgrade the stockpile of 1,650
block I ATACMS to unitary or penetrator variants. They argue that those aging
missiles will be expensive to demilitarize and that an upgrade would be less
costly than buying new ones.
“Over 10 years, you could replace the whole stockpile,” said Collins.
The company, meanwhile, is sketching new concepts for the next generation of
TACMS, which would be part of the Army’s objective force of 2020. “It
may not look anything like the current system,” said Collins. “It
could be smaller and more lethal.” The Army has not specified any requirements
yet.
Given the success in the TACMS unitary program, Collins expects that a follow-on
missile would use joint Army/Navy munitions. No matter what the “objective
force” looks like, he said, “You always will need a system to go
deep.”