Soldiers in Afghanistan have found a new use for the anti-armor Javelin weapon: against insurgents, where the pinpoint accuracy of the missile allows it to be used within the rules of engagement and without collateral damage, company officials said.
The man-portable, fire-and-forget, guided antitank missile was designed for ground forces to defeat current and future threat armored combat vehicles when the Army first received it in 1996. It also had capability against helicopters and ground-fighting positions. It uses an imaging infrared system and guided missile.
The Javelin system is produced by the Javelin Joint Venture comprised of Raytheon [RTN] and Lockheed Martin [LMT].
There have been more than 2,000 Javelin engagements fired by the Army, Marines and allies, and about 60 percent were fired in Afghanistan, Roy Adams, Raytheon Business Development manager for Javelin, said in an interview.
Though Javelin wasn’t designed as an anti-personnel weapon, troops arriving in theater with the need to stay within the rules of engagement (ROE) found that Javelin provided needed results. It was “immediate, they don’t have to wait for air to bear or indirect fire,” Adams said.
Troops returning from theater provide information coming into the program, via interviews, videos, and surveys, with some 261 interviewees from both the Army and Marines, he said.
“What we found out through these surveys…Javelin was the ‘go to’ system to use within ROE, interviewees told us,” Adams said. “Units familiar with Javelin realized how effective it was, probably one of the most friendly ROE systems because of pinpoint accuracy when it was launched…That was pretty consistent across interviews.”
Once troops were familiar with where the missile was going when they pulled the trigger, collateral damage was “almost nil,” he said.
For example, Javelin could hit systems and insurgents set up between buildings–that perhaps had civilians in them–because of the missile’s accuracy. Importantly, for the ROE, there would be no damage to those buildings.
Part of the reason is that the missile has a shaped charge, he said, meaning there are not a lot of fragments spinning away from a hit, unlike mortars that are designed to produce fragments.
Troops shared operational vignettes with program officials, for example, when they were engaged against insurgents with rifles, machineguns and a recoilless rifle, Javelin engaged the recoilless rifle, hit it, and the insurgent with the machine gun ran.
Troops also found out that insurgents were coming within 300 meters to start an attack of a combat outpost (COP). However, once troops started firing Javelin, the attacks started further away at 1,200 meters.
Javelin “pushes the attack back away from the COP,” Adams said.
As long as something is “hot,” the missile’s imaging infrared system can lock in on it, and when troops pull the trigger, Javelin flies where they target.
Adams said one soldier interviewed said: “ The Taliban has lost their fear of many of our high tech weapons…but they were scared of the Javelin.”
In another example, Adams said in a seven-hour battle, troops finally pulled out Javelin and fired, and–everything stopped. Then troops started using Javelin early on in engagements because “that ended it.” Insurgents “didn’t hang around.”
Randy Tatum, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control Business Development Manager, said the feedback from soldiers who use Javelin in combat is valuable.
“We plan spiral developments and incorporate new capabilities in response to that input,” he said. “For example, the Javelin Joint Venture is developing a multi-purpose warhead for Javelin that will increase the system’s lethality against soft targets.”
Adams said that warhead is in development and would likely add some fragmentation, while keeping the ability to defeat armor it has now, and “hopefully cut that in around 2014.”
The potential for the development of Javelin Increment 2 or future capabilities is “greatly reduced,” as other programs are finding due to budget pressures.
“We’re basically trying to fix some obsolescence issues,” he said. Technology from the 1980s needs to be replaced, removing some circuit boards.
But, he cautioned, while fixing some obsolescence issues removes weight, they have to be careful not to change the center of gravity or balance to change the flight trajectory.
Not much has changed since that Block 0 Javelin, Adams said, though gunners now have a flat panel display that is clearer and shows more information. Additionally, software enhancements provide 12 times the distance, recognizing items of interest went from 1,800 meters to 2,500 meters.