The UK Ministry of Defence and US Department of Defense have jointly tested an MBDA-developed radio frequency demonstrator that could be used as a warhead for cruise missiles or as a reusable weapon for carriage by unmanned air vehicles during attacks on command and control networks.
Photographs of the repetitive-pulse radio-frequency weapon were released by the US Naval Surface Warfare Center’s (NAVSEA) Dahlgren division at last month’s IDGA Directed Energy Weapons conference in Washington DC. The images indicate a capacitor-powered signal generator enclosed within a horizontally aligned antenna array.
Two technical demonstrations have been conducted since late 1999 using a NAVSEA open air electromagnetic test facility.
The first involved a weapon fitted beneath a surrogate UAV body replicating the Northrop Grumman BQM-145. The weapon was suspended from a crane above a building equipped as a command and control installation.
NAVSEA imagery indicates that the prototype weapon was roughly 2m (6.5ft) long with a diameter of around 0.5m, although concept drawings prepared by MBDA and included in the NAVSEA presentation indicate a more advanced version could be integrated within the nose of a BQM-145.
The second test series was conducted between late 2004 and early 2005, the company says.
Richard Moran, counter-radio frequency programme manager in NAVSEA’s Directed Energy Technology Office, says that the core concept for both test campaigns was to have “something flying by a C4I [command, control, computers, communications and intelligence] site radiating radio frequency and taking out the computer system”. He says that the test weapon involved was an MBDA proprietary product.
MBDA declines to comment on its radio-frequency weapon activities, instead directing questions to the UK MoD.
While the company has previously listed radio-frequency and high-power microwave weapons as possible future payload options for its Storm Shadow/Scalp EG cruise missiles, it has never acknowledged an active research and development programme.
PETER LA FRANCHI/WASHINGTON DC
Source: Flight International
