FEASIBILITY AND DESIGN OF A MICROWAVE WARHEAD

AVAILABILITY OF EXTREMELY HIGH-POWER PULSED MICROWAVE SOURCES AND COMPACT POWER SUPPLY CONCEPTS HAS LEAD TO INCREASING INTEREST IN MICROAVE WEAPONS. BEFORE THE COST PER KILL AND EVENTUAL MILITARY UTLITY OF SUCH WEAPONS CANBE ESTIMATED, AT LEAST THREE MAJOR TECHNICAL ISSUES MUST BE QUANTIFIED AND BOUNDED. THESE ARE THE MICROWAVE VULNERABILITY OF TARGET SOVIET SYSTEMS AND ITS VARIATION WITH FREQUENCY, PULSESHAPE, POLARIZATION AND SCENARIO DEPENDENT PARAMETERS; THE FEASIBILITY AND COST OF BUILDING A WEAPON THAT OPTIMALLY CAPITALIZES ON SOVIET VULNERABILITY WHILE MINIMIZING U. S. AND ALLIED FRATRICIDE; AND, FINALLY, THE PRACTICALITY AND COSTS OFSOVIET COUNTERS TO SUCH A WEAPON. THE PROPOSED EFFORT WILL ANALYTICALY TREAT THE FIRST TWO ISSUES, ESTABLISHING REASONABLE VULNERABILITY BOUNDS AND DESIGN APPROACHES BASED ON BOTH TEST DATA AND SYSTEM MODELING. THE OBJECTIVES IS TO PROVIDE PAPER DESIGNS OF SEVERAL WEAPONS THAT COULD BE PACKAGED IN TYPICAL AIR-DELIVERED WARHEAD VOLUMES,AND WOULD PROVE LETHAL AGAINST DEPLOYED SOVIET AIR DEFENSE SYSTEMS AT TACTIAL RANGES. FOLLOW-ON WORK WOULD THEN TREAT THE COUNTERMEASURES ISSUES AND FEASIBILITY DEMONSTRTION EXPERIMENTS.