Near Miss Warhead Technology With Multiple Effects Against Submunition Payloads
Abstract
Direct hit missile technology over the last 15 years has significantly reduced miss distance distributions against ballistic missile payloads. With this significant decrease in miss distance, future warhead technologies do not need to extend out to large miss distances to kill targets. These new concepts are only required to expand with high spray density clouds of deployed mass. A new class of warhead technologies coined "near miss warheads" has been analyzed at Raytheon to investigate near miss warhead lethality against payloads carrying submunitions. These warheads utilize most of their entire mass as penetrators generating near 10 to 30 times more mass deployed in the target's direction when compared to today's warheads. This report also discusses in detail multiple impact effects from these special classes of warheads. These tightly spaced projectiles combined with temporal spacing create a synergetic or flood loading effect, which generates high overall lethality against submunition payloads. These new warhead technologies are gaining more attention because TBMs of tomorrow could contain countermeasures, which would create small misses leaving no lethality.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 20, 2000
- Accession Number
- ADA381209
Entities
People
- Richard M. Lloyd
Organizations
- RTX