Long Range Strike System (LRSS), D2P2

Defeating moving targets similar to lightly armed personnel carriers has always presented challenges to the Department of Defense.  There is an ongoing need for an air launched loitering munition capable of striking such mobile targets.  Mobile targets present different challenges than fixed targets as they require the munition to account for rapid movements up to the moment of strike. A loitering munition also for the munition to wait for an appropriate time to make the strike, whether for intelligence, collateral damage, or better effect on target.  The overall technical objectives of this D2P2 SBIR effort is to develop an air launched loitering munition capable of reliably defeating moving light armored vehicles.  The specific objectives are to design and demonstrate a proof-of-concept system that: can be air launched from a variety aircraft at speeds of up to 130 knots or higher, can be deployed using CLT or cargo drop methods, has the loiter endurance (~30 min) and speed (~100kts) required to engage maneuvering targets moving at 80 kph at a range of 20km and, has the processing capability to incorporate ATR and a future capability of fully autonomous prosecution of a maneuvering target without an operator in-the-loop Typical loitering munitions engage moving targets by flying an intercept trajectory and detonating on impact or within a short distance from the target.  This approach works reasonably well whether the target is stationary or moving at a steady speed and direction.  But when the target changes speed or direction in the last seconds of an engagement, the bank or skid to turn approaches used for changing the flight trajectory is often insufficient to achieve the direct strike on the target required by the munition.  And for faster moving targets, the relative speeds also cause problems with insufficient camera FOV leading the air vehicle to have to over or undershoot the target to maintain it in the FOV.  In addition, the effects of wind speed and direction, atmospheric gusts, relative velocity to the target, target obscuration, and challenging RF environments further aggravate the problem. To address these challenges, Alare proposes to incorporate an off-the-shelf shoulder launched rocket munition into a loitering munition and use the air vehicle to accurately point the munition at the predicted impact point instead of maneuvering to an impact point.  At a slant range to target of 100m to 200m, a kamikaze UAS would not impact the target for 2 to 4 sec whereas the rocket could reach the target in 0.5 to 1.0 sec.