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Enhancing Rocket System Capability with Smart Launchers

NAVSEA News Wire

Release Date: 8/8/2003

INDIAN HEAD, Md. -- Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head Division (IHDIV) is answering the call for rocket launchers that are more capable, more flexible, and more easily integrated onto airframes by developing the electronics that make them "smart." While these electronics can be applied to the launchers of a number of rocket systems, the first to take advantage of them will be those of the 2.75-Inch Rocket System. The multi-purpose, ballistic-flight, 2.75-Inch Rocket System employs high explosive unitary and submunition, flechette (clustered dart-shaped projectiles), illuminating, smoke screening, and practice warheads that are mated to the Mk 66 Rocket Motor. All 2.75-inch rockets are launched using a firing pulse that is conducted into the Mk 66 Rocket Motor through its contact band. The flechette, smoke, and multi-purpose submunition warheads use time delay fuzes that must be programmed with an additional analog signal that runs through a warhead umbilical cable attached to the forward face of the launcher.

Although all the services use this rocket system, their employment capabilities vary significantly because of the differing characteristics and capabilities of their respective launchers. For example, currently fielded Navy/Marine Corps launchers use a simple electromechanical switch that directs the rocket motor firing pulse to the next rocket tube in an inherent sequential order. This unalterable firing order makes it unreasonable to carry multiple types of warheads in a single launcher, thereby reducing the mission versatility of the rocket system. These launchers also have no provision for programming the time delay fuzed-warheads.

According to Ken Johnson, Manager of the Smart Launcher Program in the Air Division of the IHDIV's Weapons Department, "The smart launcher eliminates the limitations of currently-fielded launchers and greatly enhances the usability of the rocket system." The electronic enhancements allow the launcher to use all the warheads, and to provide unrestricted rocket firing order, rocket inventory information storage, rocket presence detection, launcher service life recording, and launcher built-in test capabilities. As Johnson puts it, "The smart launcher allows the warfighter to load any rocket in any tube, and fire it in any order, providing unprecedented instantaneous flexibility in prosecuting targets with rockets."

The smart launcher not only supports advanced capabilities when employed on the more modern aircraft with a Mil-Std-1760 interface, but also has the ability to use the existing interface and provide the functionality of current Navy/Marine Corps launchers. This backward compatibility will minimize the logistics needed to field smart launchers by allowing them to replace the existing ones. Johnson comments that, "As a result of its forward-thinking design and backward compatibility, the smart launcher can be used on any Navy/Marine Corps aircraft that supports the 2.75-Inch Rocket System."

The $4.5 million, six-year smart launcher development program, sponsored by the Defense Suppression Systems Program, of the Program Executive Office for Strike Weapons and Unmanned Aviation at the Naval Air Systems Command, is currently preparing to flight-qualify three demonstration launchers that will be used as aircraft integration test assets for aircraft such as the AH-1Z Super Cobra and the AV-8B Harrier beginning in fiscal year 2005.

As the lead activity for this program, the IHDIV is responsible for, and is performing in-house the design and development of the launcher electronics assembly (LEA), integration of the LEA into the testbed launcher, parts fabrication, launcher assembly, pre-flight qualification testing, safety analysis, and obtaining flight clearances. Johnson attributes the success of this program to-date to a highly qualified and multi-disciplinary team of IHDIV engineers from the Weapons and Weapons Simulation Departments "who are rocket systems experts and understand the full spectrum of aircraft-stores integration."