Army pondering alternatives for tactical missile payload.

• Author: Ervin, Sandra I.

The U.S. Army is reevaluating its tactical missile program and exploring options to employ new munitions, in an effort to make its long-range precision weapons less costly and more relevant to modern warfare.

One pressing priority is to figure out a modernization path for the Army tactical missile (ATACMS). A panel of senior Army officers--called the Acquisition Review Council--was expected to meet last month to evaluate the service's "deep fires" strategy, including ATACMS.

The service has an aging stockpile of block I missiles that it will either upgrade or demilitarize. An extended-range version of ATACMS, block IA, is in production. But the block II, which carries smart submunitions, has not performed well in recent tests and received poor marks in the operational test and evaluation annual report for fiscal year 2001.

The TACMS block IIA was supposed to be an extended range variant of the block II and was to include more advanced submunitions, but the Army cancelled the program two years ago, citing funding shortages.

The ATACMS block I, which has a range of 165 km, gained fame in the Persian Gulf War. Launched from the M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System, the block I missile carries about 900 grenades. The manufacturer, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, in Dallas, delivered 1,650 missiles.

Block IA, with a range of 300 km, has a smaller payload (300 M74 submunitions) and is guided by GPS satellites. Lockheed made more than 800 block IA systems for the U.S. Army and international buyers. The production line is scheduled to shut down by January 2003. The block II missile--in development since 1995--is in low-rate production, but experiencing technical problems with the munitions.

The block II was to become the delivery system to replace the defunct Tri-Service Stand-off Attack Missile, cancelled in 1995, as the deep attack carrier for the brilliant anti-armor technology. The BAT, made by Northrop Grumman Corp., is a self-guided submunition that uses on-board sensors to seek, identify, employ a top-attack engagement profile and destroy moving tanks. It uses an acoustic sensor to seek out its armor targets and infrared sensors to engage the vehicles.

An improved version of BAT, called P31, has been in development since 1999. Like the basic BAT, the P31 also will rely on acoustic sensors to initially find moving vehicles, but it will use a millimeter wave and imaging infrared sensor to track the target to impact.

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