Destructive Expendable Countermeasure for Aircraft Self Protection

Tanner Research proposes to develop a dispenser-based guided airborne countermeasure (CM) capability to disable/disrupt incoming threat missiles by interfering with electronic/photonic seekers, guidance and control (G&C) subsystems or electronic S&A device (ESAD). In Phase I Tanner will embed biomimetic proximity fuzing in a NIR/visible imaging missile seeker to arm/fire a high-powered microwave (HPM) warhead that will disable/disrupt incoming threat missile electronics with microwave energy. In Phase II Tanner will interface the proximity-fuzed HPM warhead with a delivery system similar in size to the airframe component of the AN/ALE-50 Towed Decoy System. For example, a NAWCWD Spike missile modified for short-range air-to-air intercept and launched from the AN/ALE-50 to deliver HPM warhead CM in proximity to incoming threat. Using a miniature HPM warhead as the CM expendable minimizes collateral damage to nearby aircraft while still punching well above the ~1 lb HE weight class vis-à-vis blast/fragmentation when used to disable/disrupt nearby electronics in a 5-meter cubic volume. Significantly, HPM warhead reach like this will relax airframe guidance and accuracy metrics for a low-cost of missile implementation.BENEFITS: Tanner is leveraging existing HPM warhead/proximity sensor-fuzing technology for near-term integration with the AN/ALE-50 Towed Decoy and/or the Spike missile. The AN/ALE-50 system provides both a static (decoy) or dynamic (Spike) delivery platform available to place the HPM warhead CM in proximity to an incoming threat missile. The NAWCWD Spike as a baseline delivery system has a strap-down E-O seeker with inertial, laser and imaging capability. Tanner is leveraging MIL-STD 1316E and 1901A compliant micro-scale ignition/initiation systems developed for use with insensitive munitions (IM).