Agile Maneuvering Smart Projectiles for Enhanced Lethality Munitions

The application of conventional artillery in urban battlefield environments is limited because of time critical mobile targets, complex cluttered scenes, and obscured or camouflaged enemy elements mixed within a civilian population. Smart Artillery will increase accuracy against enemy targets, reduce collateral damage, and improve survivability by allowing maneuvering and retargeting of the projectile in-flight to achieve improved lethality. Technological advances in solid state miniaturization, communications, materials, and structures enable smart artillery with an in-flight maneuvering capability to obtain greater accuracy against targets or engage new and/or higher value targets. Success depends on minimizing the mass, size, and shape impacts to the projectile to increase effectiveness while controlling cost of the weapon system in order to permit pervasive application. A low mass flight control subsystem is achieved by off-loading the guidance function from the projectile to a Tracking and Control Radar. The radar tracks the artillery round in flight and communicates guidance commands to the projectile which executes the commands using innovative low-mass deployable fins to adjust its trajectory. This approach simplifies the design and mass of the projectile in order to reduce recurring cost.