ARTICLE

May 2003

Army-Navy ‘Common Missile’ To Replace Hellfire, Maverick

by Sandra I. Erwin

The Army and the Navy have agreed to collaborate on a new air-to-ground missile that will replace the battle-tested Hellfire and Maverick weapons.

A solicitation for contractor proposals is expected this month for the so-called “common missile” project. The Joint Staff must review and endorse the program before it can proceed into development later this fall.

The project could be worth $7 billion, assuming the services buy at least 70,000 missiles. The Army budgeted $360 million for the program over the next two years.

Much of the current Hellfire inventory—built in the 1980s—has exceeded its shelf life and must be replaced by 2008, officials said. The Maverick—first introduced in 1972—also is headed for retirement some time this decade.

The common missile will look very much like the Hellfire—about 70 inches long, 7 inches in diameter, weighing 108 pounds. By comparison, the Maverick—launched from Navy attack fighter aircraft—is about 98 inches long and weighs at least 400 pounds. The differences in size, however, should not be an impediment to building a common missile that can meet the needs of both helicopter-based Hellfire and fighter aircraft-based Maverick users, officials said.

“The Navy sees this as a good replacement for Maverick,” said an Army program official.

Army Apache attack helicopter aviators are the heaviest users of Hellfires. The Marine Corps and the Air Force also employ the Hellfire and are expected to eventually use the common missile as well. “I believe we have arrived at a solution that is appropriate for the users in the Navy, Marine Corps, Army, Air Force and the United Kingdom,” he said.

Gregory Jenkins, an Air Force technical advisor for advanced concepts, said that the service is “monitoring” the common missile program but has not yet committed to any future purchases.

One significant innovation that the Army hopes to achieve for the common missile is a multi-sensor seeker that will combine in a single device three forms of guidance systems. The common missile’s “multimode” seeker will package a laser, a millimeter-wave radar and an infrared sensor. Current Hellfire missiles are either laser-guided or millimeter-wave radar guided.

The seeker in the laser-guided Hellfire locks onto a laser spot on the ground and follows the beam all the way to the target. A newer version of Hellfire, designed for the Apache Longbow helicopters, is called Longbow Hellfire. This fire-and-forget missile—primarily used against tanks—takes advantage of the powerful Longbow fire-control radar. An Apache Longbow can launch up to 16 Hellfire missiles simultaneously, all of which are guided by the radar return.

The Maverick, meanwhile, is a heat-seeking missile that uses infrared and TV sensors to locate the target.

Each of the three guidance technologies—laser, millimeter-wave radar and infrared—has been employed for years, in various weapons. Mixing all three in a small enough package to fit on the nose of a 100-pound missile is technically complex, but achievable, experts said.

“In this munition, we are bringing the best of those modes into a single configuration,” said the Army official.

Critics of multi-mode seekers, meanwhile, question whether the services may be trying to pack too much into a single weapon. The Army, particularly, proved unsuccessful in a previous attempt to field a multi-mode (millimeter-wave/infrared) seeker weapon—the Brilliant Antitank munition, or BAT, which was cancelled after experiencing cost overruns and technical glitches. “A multimode seeker doesn’t do any one mode very well,” said an Army weapons scientist who did not want to be quoted by name.

Another concern about the common missile is whether it can be made rugged enough to operate at sea. Naval weapon airframes typically must be hardened to survive harsh carrier landings and must comply with mandated standards for “insensitive munitions,” to prevent explosions aboard a ship.

While missiles like Maverick are released at supersonic speeds, Hellfires are shot from slow-flying helicopters. The common missile aboard helicopters (Apaches or Cobras) will have a range of 14 km, which is about twice the reach of Hellfire. The range for the fixed-wing version of the common missile will be about 28 km. Helicopters fly at much lower altitudes than fixed-wing aircraft, so the missile will need to function both in warm and extremely cold temperatures.

Contractors estimate that, to meet the wide array of operational needs, the Navy and the Army missiles may end up with different propulsion systems.

“You could end up with something common, but modular,” said Thomas J. Murphy, manager of business development for Army missiles at the Raytheon Co. “Your fast mover would have longer legs. You could put the same seeker but you’d have a larger rocket.”

Thomas P. Moody, also a Raytheon executive, explained that, “everything from the warhead forward could be the same, and you would just put a different rocket motor.” Even if the range had to be extended to 40-50 km, “all you would have to do is change the propulsion.”

The “real challenge” in this program is to build a missile that the Army can carry on the Longbow helicopter and that also meets the Navy’s requirements for long range and supersonic launch, said Col. James Naughton, director of munitions at the Army Materiel Command. “Conceptually, the front end of the missile can be the same,” he said. The Navy version, however, could have a 300-pound rocket motor, while the Army weapon would only need a 50-pound rocket motor. “I can see that working very conveniently,” said Naughton.

The Army common-missile program official said that it is possible to have a common missile with different components, which is why the preferred description for the missile should be “modular,” rather than “common.” Those two terms, he said, “have probably brought more questions [from contractors] than I can count.”

Standard Components
The idea is to try to save money by standardizing as many components as possible, said Army Brig. Gen. Paul S. Izzo, the program executive officer for munitions. In a briefing to defense contractors in February, he explained that the Army is seeking “munitions with common sub-components” such as propellants, fuzes, submunitions, guidance and warhead.

The common missile may end up with multiple variants for each service, explained the Army official. In a modular weapon, certain pieces can be changed without having to redesign the entire munition.

“Between the Navy, Marine Corps and Army, there may be some subtle differences in the requirements, but you are looking at a munition that is highly common in terms of technology and components,” he said.

The services want a missile that can be easily assembled and disassembled. That can be particularly useful when the stockpile has to be readied for combat. Batteries, for example, must be replaced every so often. With a modular missile, the battery swap-out can be accomplished faster, without damaging the munition, the official said.

A modular weapon also is easier to dispose, or “demilitarize,” at the end of its useful life. “Rather than having to demilitarize the whole munition, you can extract those pieces which need to be recycled or reused,” the official said. “It makes it a whole lot easier if you can separate those components and do that cost-effectively.”

The Army is expected to select one contractor to manufacture the missile and a second “back-up” supplier for the seeker. The guidance being the most expensive part of the missile, the Army wants to ensure competition by keeping two firms in the program. Given the complexity of the multimode seeker, the electronics in the common missile may end up accounting for nearly 90 percent of the cost of each weapon. The Army wants the price tag per unit to not exceed $100,000.

By comparison, the current laser-guided Hellfire costs about $60,000 each, and the Longbow Hellfire is priced at approximately $150,000 per unit.

The contractors competing in this program include the current manufacturers of the Hellfire (Lockheed Martin) and the Maverick (Raytheon Co.). Also in the hunt is a Boeing-Northrop Grumman team.

As is the case with many weapon programs these days, alliances do shift. Northrop Grumman, for example, is in a partnership with Lockheed Martin for the production of the Longbow Hellfire missile, but decided to align itself with Boeing for the common missile competition. One of the earlier manufacturers of the laser-guided Hellfire, Rockwell Corp., is now part of the Boeing Co.

The laser-guided Hellfire was among the star weapons during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

The original Hellfire, however, performed poorly against tanks, noted John Ellerson, director of air-to-ground missiles at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. The weapon used in Desert Storm had a single warhead, which was good enough to defeat Iraqi tanks. But as armies around the world began to adopt more advanced reactive armor for their main battle tanks, the U.S. Army decided to upgrade the Hellfire by adding a dual shape-charged warhead that could penetrate enemy armor. The Hellfire also has a blast-fragmentation warhead, which is more effective against cave openings, Scud launchers or buildings.

As is the case with any other laser-guided weapon, the Hellfire does not perform well in bad weather, dust or smoke. The all-weather Longbow Hellfire entered production in 1996, when the Army awarded Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman a multi-year manufacturing contract. They have delivered nearly 7,000 missiles since 1997. By 2005, they expect to ship 5,000 more. The pervasive use of Hellfire in the current conflict in Iraq could result in further orders to replenish the inventory.

Large-scale production of the laser-guided Hellfire wrapped up in 1999. Lockheed still continues to manufacture small orders for the Air Force, the Navy and foreign nations. The growing popularity of Hellfire as a weapon for unmanned aerial vehicles is likely to keep the production line open, albeit with periodic shutdowns, said Ellerson.

“The services will have to watch their inventory between now and the time the common missile comes on board,” he said.

As to whether the Army and the Navy can successfully work together, that remains to be seen, said Naughton. “It depends on whether the services stick to it. ... In the past, I have seen programs where joint sponsors start waffling as the program costs grow.” If the project runs over budget, “that usually kills the program,” he said. “Inevitably, the lead service gets blamed.”

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