Frag Out! Magazine
Issue link: https://fragout.uberflip.com/i/1064315
problems with striking its target. The first such problem is the phenome- non of IR crossover. In the case of targets without an engine in operation (a tank inactive for a long time, a bunker, etc.), two times a day (at dusk and dawn) there occurs a phenomenon when ΔT equals zero, meaning that the temperature of the background is almost the same as that of the "target". It is very difficult to determine the target for the seeker of an FMG-148 warhead then. Americans took the problem into consideration in advance. The manual suggests extended manual setting of contrast and brightness to have at least a slight chance of determining a part of the target for the warhead. The thing is, however, that the Polish weather may make it much more difficult to lock the warhead on the target even though the CLU's operator will know well where the target is. This cou- pled with the said "IR crossover" makes it virtually impossible to lock a target at a distance of over 0.5 km. It can be just as difficult to mark a target against a sunrise or a sunset, or against a very hot city landscape – depending on the circumstances, the situation can extend the proce- dure of target marking, or even make it impossible to set the target at a distance larger than 0.5 km. But a bigger problem is vehicles featuring IR band camouflage. Such camouflage solutions are manufactured in e.g. Poland (Berberys), Russia (Tarnina), Sweden (Barracuda), or Israel. They can mask the thermal signature of a vehicle so effectively that the only objects that can be seen in the CLU are an engine spot, fumes, and a fragment of hot tracks. Javelin's manual stresses the need to mark the middle of a vehicle's body. Again – a human operator will know where the target is, but the problem will be to mark the target for the missile's warhead. Situations when vehicles featuring such camouflage solutions start using multispectral grenades or when there are fires and burning wrecks on the battlefield get highly problematic. An IR warhead may be even unable to "locate" a target predefined by a CLU operator. Javelin's manual puts it straight: wait until the vehicle moves away from such ar- tificial battlefield jammers or until the camouflage grenades burn out, or the target becomes heated up. The Spike does not pose such problems – the operator who has detected a target may fire at it using the guid- ance option selected before launching the missile, i.e. the IR or the CCD camera. Also – even if it's impossible to lock the warhead on the target automatically (F&F), it's easy to launch the missile in the manual mode at a given reference point in order to later try to lock missile at the target (towards which the missile is heading) automatically or guide the missile fully manually at the target via a fiber-optical link. This solution substan- tially reduces the effectiveness of camouflage systems and active soft kill systems. It is much more difficult to trick a human in the decision loop than a missile's computer. A huge difference is also in the actual range of combating targets in European conditions. In theory, the Javelin should be able to reach a target at a distance of over 4 km, but the problem is its missile's warhead ability to lock the target. That's why Block 0 had a declared range of 2 km, and Block I – of 2.5 km. These values are untrue, of course, because they depend on the landscape where the battle is fought. It is the range, or actually – to be more precise – the line-of-sight (LOS) length between the Javelin's CLU and the target that determines the capability to shoot missiles at a given distance. www.fragoutmag.com