Posted by Courtney E. Howard
SACRAMENTO, Calif., 20 Oct. 2010. Aerojet, a GenCorp company, demonstrated its alternative warhead technologies in a tactical missile flight environment to test Aerojet's solution to eliminate unexploded ordnance (UXO) on the U.S. Army's Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS). The three-mission, missile-launched warhead tests were the first live-fire, missile-delivered performance tests conducted by the U.S. Army at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico for the GMLRS Alternative Warhead Program (AWP).
Each flight-tested warhead employed a high-reliability inventory fuze to virtually eliminate the chance of leaving unexploded ordnance, a key U.S. Army requirement. The GMLRS AWP program will ultimately field a new warhead replacing the submunitions in the GMLRS Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munition (DPICM) warhead. The U.S. and other governments have agreed to ban these submunition warheads, which may leave dangerous unexploded ordnance.
The flight tests were the culmination of an 11-month development in which Aerojet's new technology was validated to deliver its effectiveness while surviving all missile launch and flight conditions. Next summer, the U.S. Army plans to select the production alternative warhead supplier after evaluating these test results together with program and manufacturing cost proposals.
Vice President and Deputy to the President, Dick Bregard, said, "This new technology offers unprecedented precision in controlling the warhead's lethal effects, and represents a cost-effective method to take full advantage of the GMLRS missiles' precision-guidance capabilities. Thus, warfighters can engage and neutralize targets using fewer missiles while reducing the possibility of collateral damage and UXO on the battlefield."
