After reading Michael Yon’s Dispatch the other day, I spent quite a few hours researching the status of other weapon systems that could do the job the Kiowa guys are doing. My main concern was looking for a way that would put our guys at lower risk. I found two, but I found out that military R&D is a crazy world of money, politics, and changing requirements. And just when I thought I had it all sewn up, solution in hand, I realized that I was going in the totally wrong direction. More isn’t wanted. More probably isn’t needed. So I went searching for Less. That’s where I ran into the R&D and budget nightmares. Ok, here’s the situation ... you’ve got a UAV that’s spotted some jihadi planting a bomb somewhere. You’ve got about 8 minutes to zap them, or they’re outta there. Your UAV sends you the GPS coordinates and paints the terrorists with an IR laser. What to do?

Answer A) Fast Link the data to the Palladin crew one or two mountains over, about 30 miles away. They load up a special round called an Excalibur XM982, point the gun in the general direction of the target, and fire. Less than two minutes later the jihadi are a smokey stain on the street corner. One shot. This is Smart Muntions with a graduate degree.

The Excalibur XM982 is the end result of a program that began a long time ago with the CopperHead shell. It’s dynamically guided artillery. You see, cannons are great, but they really aren’t super accurate at long ranges. They can’t be. The wind pushes the shell around in the air, this bit of air is cooler, this bit is warmer or moister, etc. So when there’s a target for artillery, what usually happens is that a whole bunch of shots get fired off, and the entire area around the target gets turned into rubble. But we can’t play that way in Iraq. Can’t have collateral damage. Have to keep things precise and minimal. So some really smart people figured out how to take a cannon shell and add control fins, GPS tracking system that can withstand massive G forces, and laser aquisitors, and make it all work together. The result, though quite expensive, is the XM982. Instead of the regular level of artillery accuracy of around 200 meters at 50km distance, this one is accurate to about 15 feet. Hey, what’s true about horseshoes and hand grenades is even more true about artillery: close enough counts just fine thanks. Well, times have changed:

It looks like this:
loads like this: 
and works like this:
Guided Artillery Projectile

This puppy has been in service over yonder for about a year now, and it works great. But it’s way too much bomb for the basic task of urban jihadi elimination. So they made a smaller version that works on 120mm shells. Still too big. So they made a smaller version that works on 105mm shells. Still too big. So they’re working on another version that works on 81mm mortar rounds, but that will probably turn out to be too big too. See, the Kiowa crews are using $100,000 Hellfire missiles to do the job right now. Packing a mere 20lbs of BOOM, even in a shaped charge, is still too much bomb. So what’s left that can take out a car or two, or a small bunch of bad guys, doesn’t cost a fortune, is accurate and small enough to make the media happy, but has the range to keep our guys from getting shot at? Well, there isn’t much left, so that brings us to




Answer B) The Hydra missile. The Hydra has been around in one form or another since the closing days of WWII. It’s the 2.75” diameter rocket that’s launched from airplanes and helicopters. They’re usually mounted in some sort of pod with a dozen or more of their brothers. You’ve seen them firing from helicopters in nearly every bit of Vietnam footage. It’s rock solid reliable, and only carries a 10lb explosive warhead. That’s microscopic practically. But, they aren’t guided missiles. They just shoot straight out, and go boom when they hit something. Once again, times have changed in the missile world too:
This is the DAGR, brought to you by the nice people at Lockheed. It’s the latest and greatest version of the APKWS project.  That stands for Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System, and what it is, is a laser guidance package that bolts on to a standard Hydra missile and makes it accurate to within a couple inches. Pretty neat, huh? The Army has tens of thousands of Hydras sitting around. This DAGR package costs about $10,000 per shot, a lot less than the cost of a Hellfire, and it has half the blast power. You can carry at least four times as many in the same space as a Hellfire too. Seems like this is the answer, right? Well, not so fast. Remember when I said I ran into a nightmare of military R&D? Ok, here goes: the APKWS program has bounced around from one major defense contractor to another for years now. General Dynamic had it, BAE had, Lockheed had it, even South Korea took a stab at it with their LOGIR version ... everybody came up with essentially the same idea, it worked, and they all ran their testing to just about field readiness status. But for fiscal year 2008 the government has cut the funding. But with pretty good reason: up to now, the best design could only acquire and hold the target if it was aimed within +/-4.5 degrees of the target. That’s a pretty straight shot, and in the heat of combat flight crews may not have the time for it. So the program got shelved. But Lockheed then did something improbable. Something amazing. Something nearly unheard of. They took a bunch of pre-existing parts, already proven on several other missile systems, parts already tested and approved and in production, and slapped them together. Ta-Da, they created the DAGR without any government funding, in a really short time period, and it works at least twice as good as the requirements called for. Oh, and it can lock onto target when the shot is +/- 15 degrees, which is a lot more forgiving than the other version’s 4.5.

Korea’s LOGIR vs. General Dynamic’s APKWS - same missile, same idea, same as the DAGR but not quite as good



At this point our government has not purchased any of the DAGR kits from Lockheed. The program is defunded, so they aren’t interested. Well, fine. Lockheed has put the guidance kit on the world market, and the Brits and the Aussies and lots of other countries are buying them up left and right, cuz everybody everywhere uses the Hydra missile. I wonder if our Kiowa crews will be able to improvise and overcome the bureaucracy and get their hands on this thing?

Lockheed Martin’s DAGR™ Continues Successful Test Program
ORLANDO, FL, February 28th, 2008—Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] recently completed three successful tests of the DAGR™ semi-active laser guidance kit for 2.75-inch/70mm rockets – two guided flight tests and a multi-purpose sled test – demonstrating the system’s precision-strike accuracy, off-axis capability and delayed fuzing mode.

DAGR is now 6-for-6 in control vehicle and guided test vehicle flights, beginning in February 2006.

The DAGR guidance kit adapts to rockets such as the Hydra 70 and CRV-7, with high explosive and blast fragmentation warheads, to provide guided-rocket performance comparable to that of the precision-strike laser-guided HELLFIRE II missile, and can be launched from both the M299 and M310 “smart” launchers.

Both guided test flights, conducted in January at Eglin Air Force Base, FL, were launched from the all-digital M299 launcher. DAGR-equipped rockets were fired from Lockheed Martin’s four-pack launch canister, which is capable of firing through the rocket management system or the HELLFIRE interface. The first DAGR-equipped rocket in this test event was shot from a range of 4.2 km and 6 degrees off boresight; the second shot, from a range of 5.1 km. Both test shots were direct hits, impacting the target within inches of the laser spot.

The sled test was performed in December 2007 at Redstone Arsenal, AL, and demonstrated DAGR’s delayed fuzing mode and ability to penetrate a vehicle. Previous DAGR sled tests validated delayed fuzing against structures, and warhead arena tests validated the guidance kit’s blast fragmentation capability.”

So there you go ... several billion tax dollars spent in defense R&D to develop precision munitions that we aren’t going to use against this particular enemy. No tax dollars at all spent on R&D for a weapons system that seems perfect for use against this particular enemy, but we don’t want to buy any, even though the rules we are forcing our troops to use really are all about “less ebil thingz to dooz to doez pore pore Iraquis”. (Drew458 shakes head sadly, hits the Post button, and goes to bed).

What, you want links too? Ok here. There’s several hours of reading here, plus lots of pictures. Google up TUSK, and search YouTube and MetCafe for boom-boom videos.
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/products/DAGR/index.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/m982-155.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/saber.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/tcm.htm
http://www.defense-update.com/products/e/excalibur.htm
http://iqpcs1.digitopia.net/binary-data/IQPC_CONFEVENT/pdf_file/12276.pdf
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread193027/pg1
http://www.deagel.com/Projectiles/M982-Excalibur_a001159001.aspx
http://www.deagel.com/news/Excalibur-Successfully-Completes-Final-Testing-Clearing-the-Path-for-Early-Fielding_n000001633.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM982_Excalibur
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htart/articles/20060417.aspx
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/issues/2006/march/helos.htm
http://www.defense-update.com/products/a/apkws-gd.htm
http://www.gizmag.com/go/5510/
http://www.defensereview.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1047
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app4/275in-rockets.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/apkws.htm
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/issues/2006/march/helos.htm

PS - what a great quote from Lockheed. This is Contractor-Speak for “they screwed us over and cut the funding, but we developed the missile anyway, and we hope somebody will buy it”:
“DAGR is being developed by Lockheed Martin as a non-developmental item"...” Isn’t that just a lovely phrase? How smoothly diplomatic. Way to go Lockheed. And thanks.

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