Munition Development for Petroleum, Oil, and Lubricant (POL) Targets

The United States Air Force has a need for a weapon that can catastrophically defeat a variety of petroleum, oil, and lubricant (POL) targets. Consumption of the target contents by burning is the most desirable outcome of an attack. The burning of POL also has the potential to extend damage beyond the POL target due to heat and secondary fires. Fire-start of POL long chain hydrocarbons is challenging because of high flash points that increase the safety of their use. Effective fire-start in POLs will require an ignition source and burn accelerant built into the weapon. Furthermore, the fire-start approach must be effective for a variety of high flash point chemicals. In response to the Air Force’s need, Corvid Technologies (Corvid) is developing a reactive liner capable of form fitting to existing traditional and future missile body warhead cavities, capable of igniting POL from high explosive detonation and sustaining burn within a tank structure. Corvid will leverage their expansive computational resources and knowledgeable computational analysts with the capacity to model and simulate the unique physics demands of this proposed work. Corvid also has the expertise to safely plan and execute testing of this reactive liner in the development of this solution. By the completion of Phase II, we will have virtually engineered through simulation an understanding of the dynamic environment of a tactical tank penetration and explosive detonation within a fluid. Further Corvid will have test data to show the reactive liner effectiveness at igniting POL, as well as a suite of simulations to validate with the test data. Corvid has a history of coordination with many large primes, and should the AF indicate need on a specific platform, Corvid will partner with that prime for follow-on work in a Phase III.