Gun Launched Guided Projectile

Conventional medium caliber projectiles fall short of desired effectiveness due to factors such as aiming inaccuracy, component manufacturing tolerances, wind effects, etc. A guided projectile that could obviate these factors would substantially improvehit probability, increasing effective range and lethality. Commensurately longer standoff distances also increase warfighter survivability. Further, increased lethality of smaller caliber weapons may reduce reliance on larger caliber (less mobile)munitions, contributing to greater force mobility.Our Phase I program resulted in a conceptual design for a medium caliber gun launched guided projectile and its transceiver, aimed at addressing these needs. Our approach exploits recent advances in 'smart' material development to provide an innovativeflight control mechanism driven through a very simple communications link to its transceiver, in a low cost and rugged configuration. In Phase II, we will refine our design for compatibility with desired maneuverability and gun launch and flight loads,build prototype projectiles, and demonstrate their performance in a progressive series of tests, culminating in flight demonstration of projectile maneuver capability at extended range. While the Phase II design is based on the Bofors 40mm L70 HEIT round,our concept readily scales to the full range of interest (12mm to 40mm).