Northrop Grumman expects the imminent award of a contract from the US Army to develop an improved Brilliant Anti-Armour (BAT) submunition. The BAT will be optimised to find, attack and destroy stationary as well as moving targets, says William Forster, Northrop Grumman's vice-president of land combat systems.
The 36-month engineering and manufacturing development contract is initially worth an estimated $150 million. While BAT is an autonomous submunition that uses passive acoustic and infrared sensors to target armoured vehicles, the next-generation BAT will also incorporate a millimetre wave sensor to expand the weapon's adverse weather performance against stationary and high-value targets such as missile launchers.
"The target set will expand significantly with the product improvement. It will be able to attack targets that we are likely to encounter on the battlefield," says Forster. BAT is carried and dispensed by the Lockheed Martin MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System Block II, with each missile carrying 13 BATs.
Foster says proposals to use BAT with the US Army's Lockheed Martin Vought Systems Multiple Launch Rocket System "appear to be serious and could emerge as an advanced technology demonstration project". BAT is also a candidate for the USAF's miniaturised munition capability programme, which could get under way in fiscal year 2002, with fielding as early as FY2007.
Other candidates include the USAF's Tactical Munitions Dispenser and the US Navy's Boeing SLAM and Raytheon Tactical Tomahawk cruise missiles.
The company plans to manufacture up to 20,000 BATS by 2011, but the production run could increase should the weapon and enhanced BAT be acquired by other US military services. Forster says it is premature to discuss the prospects for foreign military sales of the advanced weapon.
Source: Flight International
