Developing Soft-Kill Capability for Light Armoured Vehicles through Battlefield Simulations
Abstract
Light Armoured Vehicles (LAVs) are being developed to meet the modern requirements of rapid deployment and operations other than war. To achieve these requirements, passive armour is minimized and survivability depends more on a soft-kill capacity including sensors and countermeasures. Sensors for these soft-kill systems are passive and can be used to detect threats at much longer ranges. Battlefield obscuration strategies are inadequate when applied to LAVs. LAVs are vulnerable to many threats and sufficiently different in design, capability and battlefield environment to benefit significantly from new strategies. Factors influencing this requirement include: i) the development of sensors with increasing accuracy and precision, ii) the need to minimize obscurant interference with vehicle sensors and other countermeasures, including active armour and explosive reactive armour, iii) the need to develop hemispherical obscurant coverage extending into the millimetre wave range, iv) grenades are needed to better match the increased tempo from greater vehicle speed, mobility and turret slew rate, v) the automatic configuration and selection of grenade burst patterns based on on-board processing and vehicle networks. Spectral coverage in the visible to long-wave infrared regions is adequate, but trends in missile design are leading to the development of hybrid seekers, including laser designating, MMW seeking and imaging-infrared seeking capability accelerated by MEMS technology. With increased tempo, the time needed to achieve full obscuration becomes critical. Dazzling of a detected threat can be used to disrupt aiming and firing a second missile until full obscuration is achieved. Dazzling can also be used with the laser-illumination detection of optical systems. A generic threat response, based on dazzling and visible/IR/MMW grenades is preferred because of the large number of possible threats and the difficulty in developing practical identification strategies.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 2007
- Accession Number
- ADA637804
Entities
People
- John L. Rapanotti
Organizations
- DRDC Valcartier