Enhanced Lethality Munitions for Army Applications

Enhanced lethality munitions are eagerly sought after by the designers of the next generation of smaller, lighter, and cheaper munitions within DoD. A very important issue for the enhancement material is that it be no more massive than the current concepts. In fact, a reduction in mass compared to a common approach of building a missile and adding a warhead, would be to build the missile structural components, i.e. from the lethality enhancers themselves. This would allow the elimination of the extra mass of the warhead while delivering up to ten times the combined energy as a steel warhead, to the target. Bulkheads heatshields, sensor housings, and connecting structures would be the most likely candidates for these materials. These materials can be formed from bimetallic compositions such that they will react spontaneously when exposed to high temperatures / pressures similar to what would be experienced in a missile or bullet impact. Upon ignition, the energy released by the Reactive Materials (RM) can exceed the kinetic energy due to velocity alone by as much as ten times.