Army-Navy 'common missile' to replace Hellfire, Maverick.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

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--rakes 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 hear-seeking missile that uses infrared and TV sensors to locate the...