How to build cheaper smart weapons

Flocks of dumb weapons could take orders from a clever one

https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21722620-
flocks-dumb-weapons-could-take-orders-clever-one-how-build-cheaper

Print edition | Science and technology

May 25th 2017

ON APRIL 7th a salvo of missiles fired by American warships in the

Mediterranean scored direct hits on several Syrian aircraft shelters
from hundreds of miles away, demonstrating once more the
effectiveness of precision, or “smart”, weapons. At $1.3m apiece
such missiles are usually reserved for important targets like parked
aircraft. They are too pricey to be expended on lightly armed
insurgents. (As George Bush junior once memorably put it, he was not
prepared to “fire a $2m missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel
in the butt”.)

Frank Fresconi, who works at the Army Research Laboratory’s

Aeromechanics and Flight Control Group, in Maryland, hopes to change
that. He is working on something called the Collaborative Cooperative
Engagement (CCOE) programme, which hopes to provide the advantages of
smart weapons at a fraction of the cost. A new generation of cut-
price precision munitions could change the way America’s army wages
war, for despite being the world’s most technologically advanced and
generously funded force, it still employs a great deal of cheap,
dumb, unguided weapons.

The idea is to link an individual smart munition with a flock of

dumber, cheaper companions. The smart round uses its sophisticated
sensors to find targets, and passes data to its less able comrades.
The smart weapon handles all of the tricky navigation and target
identification; its companions just have to work out where they are
in relation to their master, and then go where they are told. Data
are passed between them in brief radio chirps.

Dr Fresconi is not making a specific missile. Rather, he and his team

are developing the electronic building blocks needed to assemble a
wide range of different weapons. The results might be fired from a
mortar, from a cannon, from a rocket launcher mounted on a lorry, or
from the sort of weapon an individual solider might carry. In each
case, a shell or rocket would release a swarm of submunitions. Under
the guidance of the master weapon, these might disperse to attack
individual enemy foxholes, or work together to hit a single target
like a tank or a bunker simultaneously.

Precision guidance brings advantages besides a higher hit rate. There

is less risk of accidentally killing innocent bystanders. No
ammunition is wasted blowing up things that are not the target. By
eliminating waste, Dr Fresconi reckons that a smart artillery round
might get away with using a warhead one tenth the size of an unguided
one for the same destructive effect.

The biggest challenge is navigation. Many existing smart weapons use

GPS, which relies on signals from satellites that may be jammed by a
sophisticated opponent. Others use laser guidance, which demands a
soldier be close enough to the target that he can highlight it with a
laser designator. The new architecture will avoid both those
drawbacks by using optical techniques: guiding itself by spotting
landmarks, and recognising targets visually. Dr Fresconi says the
inspiration for the optical sensors came from the commercial world,
where facial-recognition systems are used by everyone from Facebook
to shops, policemen and airports.

The trick is to pack the necessary hardware into a few cubic

centimetres, and to deal with the high speeds at which shells and
missiles travel. Rather than having several seconds to scan their
targets at leisure, as airport systems do, missiles will need to
scan, recognise and act in milliseconds. And once the targets have
been found, the weapons will need to be able to turn sharply at high
speed. To do that, the team is fitting them with fins that deploy
after launch, and pondering using sideways-facing rockets to give
them even more agility.

All this wizardry must work not only when a munition has been “soft
launched”—dropped from a helicopter or a drone, in other words—but
also when it has been fired out of a cannon or launched by a rocket.
That will subject the electronics to extremely high g-forces, as they
are accelerated to several times the speed of sound in milliseconds,
or spun at thousands of revolutions per second when fired from rifled
artillery barrels.
In recent tests a flock of multiple projectiles successfully
navigated together. However, full realisation of the technology will
take at least a decade to mature. The plan is to start big and scale
down. CCOE will roll out gradually, says Dr Fresconi, with successive
generations getting smarter and fitting into ever-smaller weapons.

As those weapons reach the battlefield, they will enable the use of
new tactics. The manoeuvring munitions can carry out what the Army
calls counter-defilade fire—hitting a sniper hiding behind a wall,
for example, or troops concealed in trenches. Dr Fresconi also talks
about “hyper precision” and being able to home in on a target’s
weakest spot, or striking simultaneously at a precise point for
maximum effect. And the munitions will afford a new capability for
engaging dispersed targets. These might be enemy foot soldiers
scattered over a wide area—or, in future, a swarm of hostile
incoming drones. One missile full of Collaborative Cooperative
munitions might hit the lot.

Finally, the new development could signal the end of indiscriminate

artillery fire. By replacing dumb shells with smart ones, a barrage
landing on a town would be more likely to hit only military targets,
while—so the researchers hope—leaving civilians unharmed.

This article appeared in the Science and technology section of the

print edition under the headline "Follow the leader"