Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS)

[ORAC]

If I'm counting right, that gives the AH-1W Cobra a load of 16 precision guided weapons, 8 per side. :eek:

Ares: Video: APKWS Goes to War
(http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&newspaperUserId=27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3af1c2263a-e927-46bf-9cb8-b78c10784c02&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest)

An unguided, Vietnam War-vintage missile with a dispersion pattern of up to 500 yards at medium ranges is being transformed into a precision air-to-ground weapon that already has been fired into a laser spot – about the size of a basketball – at a range of three miles.

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The new weapon, with a warhead that can punch through a wall and then explode, is expected to be operational on U.S. Marine Corps helicopters in Afghanistan as early as this spring. BAE Systems expects to deliver its next batch of low-rate production Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) missiles directly to the U.S. Marine Corps for shipment to operational units. The first 325 low-rate production missiles were delivered to the Navy Department in December, and the second lot of 600 missiles will be dispatched in early Fiscal 2012. With the end of operational testing in Jan., a full-rate production decision for about 1,000 missiles a year is expected to follow early in the year.

“On the AH-1W Cobra it will fill the weapons gap between guns and the Hellfire,” says Maj. Ryan Schiller, former lead operational test director for Air Test and Evaluation Squadron-Nine (VX-9)at China Lake, Calif. Naval Air Warfare Center. “On the UH-1Y it will introduce a precision guided missile capability that is new for the Huey side of the house. The overall result is going to be a higher number of precision kills per sortie, and it will improve aircrew survivability due to increased standoff ranges. It also offers a low-yield weapon for urban conflict where collateral damage has to be minimized.”

So how does the magic work with a missile that is 29% of the weight and about 15% of the cost of the benchmark AGM-114 Hellfire missile? Part of the answer is lots and lots of warehoused missiles that are already paid for and can be easily modified. BAE Systems came up with a mid-body addition – the WGU-59/B guidance section – that can simply be screwed into place between the existing warhead and Mk.66 Mod. 4 rocket motor, says Lt. Col. Raymond Schreiner, lead test pilot for VX-31 at China Lake.

The mid-body guidance section has four small wings with flaperon flight control surfaces on the trailing edge and an optical sensor on the leading edge of each. “The wings provide heavy, stable platforms,” says Dick Venuti, BAE System’s technical director for Missiles and Munitions Solutions. “When they open and lock, they become an optical bench. The missile’s accuracy depends on how much each wing doesn’t move.”

Key to the mid-body design was development of the Distributed Aperture Semi-Active Laser’s electronics stack and optics. The package is about the size of a soda can with guidance, seeker, computers and receiver electronics all connected through four fiber optic bundles to the optical sensors on each wing. During production, the wings and “eyeball” optics are folded and stored inside the missile where they are insulated with a “wing slot shield” against weather, heat, particulates and blast damage from adjacent rockets. Before loading the missiles, they are updated with the laser code of the day.

During the launch is where a mid-body sensor array shows its value. “Rockets with nose mounted seekers have a tough time with adjacent rocket fire,” Venuti says. “It takes all the output of the rocket motor with its very corrosive, high-aluminum content and puts it on the face of any exposed seeker. Inside the launcher, the over pressures were more than anyone expected. With APKWS, the missile interior is water, pressure, carbon and aluminum tight.”

[barnstormer1968]

I could see four pods of those on a Spectre, or two on a large UAV

[BEagle]

But when releasing a precision weapon which needs a laser designated point upon which to home, surely propagation delay would be crucial?

How could a drone operator thousands of miles away know exactly what he was shooting at if, at the moment of release, the sight picture was in reality a couple of seconds old?

Anyway, this looks like a very promising air-to-ground weapon for helicopters or COIN fixed-wing aircraft such as the OV-10X.

[t43562]

I really know nothing about this but as a guess one might have image recognition software on the drone that was good enough to track something the operator initially selected through any change in position that might occur in the course of the minimum response time of the operator.

So the operator would be x seconds late to see something, take y seconds to think and it would take another x for the command to get back to the drone. The drone would have to keep image frames for at least 2x+y seconds so that it would know what object the operator had targeted in the past and it would have to see if it could follow that target through all past frames and into the present before it acted on the command.

There are probably loads of difficulties with this.

[Airborne Aircrew]

There are probably loads of difficulties with this. Not really. Images do not need to be video quality for target acquisition, (24+ frames per second). It would easily suffice taking 2-4 frames per second at most. The images are transmitted back to the operator and each image is placed in an image buffer on the vehicle that can drop the oldest image at say 10 seconds after it was taken. When the operator selects a target the system retransmits the entire image back to the vehicle with the target marked. Identification of the target on the appropriate image and the subsequent tracking of it through the later frames in the image buffer would bring the target into real time an Robert is your father's brother... :ok:

[barnstormer1968]

Beagle

I see where you are coming from, and I probably wasn't clear enough in my idea.

Imagine the scene where the missiles locks onto a las@r fired from a JTAC or other person on the ground. This could take out some baddies in various or multiple parts of a 'complex' without needing larger hellfires which cause more collateral damage.

The UAV could provide a longer time on station, and by using air delivered weapons rather than anti tank type shoulder/ground launch weapons the man/woman on the ground remains hidden (no smoke/blast trail).

This may be nonsense but comes from my green rather than blue backgrounds way of thinking.

[BEagle]

This is a semi-active system which would appear to need constant real-time illumination during the time of weapon flight. Fine if the air platform can do that....and equally so if the green team on the ground in the vicinity can provide the relevant illumination.

I see your point now, barnstormer1968 - you meant the use of the drone as a 'bomb truck' rather than for autonomous target designation?

I'm not sure what the current situation is with OV-10X, but earlier versions could carry over 6000 lb of ordnance, which, allied to a chin-mounted turret target marker, could certainly provide a great deal of hurt to the bad guys.

[Ron Fenest]

Great if you happen to have a stockpile of Hydra that you can't use due to strict RoE but not the best out there if you are starting from scratch.

Either Lockheed Martin DAGR or Elbit Systems/ATK GATR have to be the choice if you have a blank sheet. The Lock On Before Launch capability alone puts them both ahead of AKPWS especially for any UK requirements and they both have direct access to codes that enable them to emulate Hellfire, not an inexpensive activity.

I don't think they are the only ones either as Thales are claiming LMM will also have a SAL variant but I doubt that it will be anywhere near the LM or Elbit price per unit. That said it wouldn't be strange for the UK to throw money at it until it succeeds instead of going for choices already out there.