At the Paris Air Show this week MBDA offered its concept of an indirect precision attack capability for land and naval artillery in 2035 and beyond with the CVS302 Hoplite system.
This concept is the fourth and latest of MBDA’s annual Concept Visions projects. MBDA challenged its European workforce to suggest concepts and technologies for weapons systems that could give future surface forces the organic capability of delivering precision effects at range. After an assessment by an international panel within MBDA, the winning concepts and technologies became the subject of intense workshops, utilizing not only the technical expertise inside the company, but also reaching out to the end-user community–Hoplite is the result.
 |
| Artist’s Concept Hoplite Missiles Courtesy MBDA |
The Hoplite system consists of a mission control system and two missile variants, Hoplite-S and Hoplite-L, both of which can fly 70km in under two minutes or up to 160 km at high altitude in under four minutes when the way is clear.
The system is able to quickly and safely traverse contested airspace and closely coordinate salvo firings to provide an exceptional fire support capability to the front line, a company statement said.
Hoplite’s mission control guides the operator who maintains executive control. Planning times would be greatly reduced by automating trajectory planning and collateral damage risk modeling.
Optimized mission solutions differing in priorities such as time to target or survivability are provided to the commanding officer.
These features enable firings that would otherwise be impossible, while removing the need to clear an air corridor and reducing the risk of exposing the launch position, the concept states. All processing takes place on a tablet-sized computer generally located with the artillery or warship’s command and control but it can also be with a single launcher. By being platform agnostic the system would adapt to a wide range of operational needs.
Hoplite-S is a 3.2m long, 120kg utility missile for simple, supported engagements. It has a spot-scanning laser radar (LADAR) seeker that also provides semi-active laser detection among other functions. As the missile is either third party designated or attacks on coordinates, its LADAR is used for aim-point refinement. The one-way datalink–receiver–allows mission updates and retasking.
With targeting assistance from Hoplite-L, the Hoplite-S can be used in more complex scenarios.
Slightly larger, the Hoplite-L is a 3.75m, 135kg missile designed for complex, isolated engagements that require an operator in the loop (OITL) capability. Its multi-mode seeker allows passive and active 3D imaging, and is robust to adverse weather, heavily cluttered scenes and countermeasures. The missile can decelerate to subsonic speeds to provide time for OITL targeting over its two-way datalink. This, and its LADAR channel, can be used to direct Hoplite-S onto targets in coordinated salvo attacks resulting in a high-value increase in capability compared to current systems.
Certain innovative technologies allow such high performances, the company said.
Both missiles use an air turbo rocket (ATR) propulsion system, with its integrated boost motor, to cruise at over Mach 2. The ATR offers the benefits of solid rocket motors and gas turbines, as well as allowing the large accelerations and decelerations required by the missiles. A Boosted Kinetic Energy Penetrator warhead enables Hoplite-L to defeat all of its targets from any flight velocity. Lastly, the spot-scanning LADAR is used by both missiles for 3D imaging, target identification, SAL reception, fuzing and as an altimeter.
MBDA is jointly held by BAE Systems and EADS with 37.5 percent each, and Finmeccanica with 25 percent.
The Hoplite concept of operations is available at: http://www.mbda-systems.com/mediagallery/#/videos/3083.