1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Definition/Scope

The Weapons technology area includes efforts devoted to armament and electronic warfare technologies for all new and upgraded nonnuclear weapons. The Weapons area consists of 12 subareas grouped in three broad categories, illustrated in Figure X-1. The efforts in these subareas are directed toward providing demonstrated technology that better enables the warfighter to incapacitate or destroy enemy personnel, materiel, and infrastructure and to provide defense against or countermeasures to his ability to wage war.

Conventional weapons (CW) focus on munitions, their components and launching systems, guns, tactical propulsion, bombs, rockets, guided missiles, projectiles, special warfare weapons, mortars, mines, countermine systems, torpedoes, explosive ordnance disposal, and underwater weapons and their associated combat control. CW subareas include countermine/mines, guidance and control, guns, missiles, ordnance, undersea weapons, and weapon lethality/vulnerability.

Directed-energy weapon (DEW) technologies are those that relate to the production and projection of a beam of intense electromagnetic energy or atomic/subatomic particles that are used as a weapon. Directed-energy weapons and devices generate energy that travels at or near the speed of light from a beam source directly to the target. Directed energy includes the laser DEW and high-power microwave DEW subareas. The only particle beam effort is supported by previous year funding and is not discussed further.

Electronic warfare (EW) is responsible for developing technology that provides U.S. military forces with the capability to survive in their execution of all operations/missions by maximizing their unchallenged, operational use of the electromagnetic spectrum—while denying the same from the enemy by using electromagnetic means to detect and attack enemy sensor, weapon, and command infrastructure systems. The underlying technologies within EW are divided into three principal subareas: threat warning, self-protection, and mission support.

The combined expenditure for weapons in FY97 is $839 million, of which $510 million is allocated to CW technologies, $122 million to the development of EW technologies, and $207 million to DEW development. The figures are considerably less than those in the FY96 DTAP because some DTAP DTOs from FY96 are now reported in the Joint Warfighting Science and Technology Plan (JWSTP). The FY98 request of $721 million would allocate $490 million to CW, $114 million to EW, and $117 million to DEW.

A glossary of abbreviations and acronyms used in this chapter begins on page X-63.

1.2 Strategic Goals

The overarching strategic goal for weapons technology investment is to develop and transition superior weapons technology that will provide the services with affordable and decisive military capabilities to execute future missions. The specific goals in CW technologies mainly focus on systems to destroy enemy personnel, materiel, and infrastructure, but with a growing emphasis on incapacitation through nonlethal technologies. The specific goal of the EW and DEW technology efforts is to control and exploit the electromagnetic spectrum for maximum effectiveness of U.S. military operations.

1.3 Acquisition/Warfighting Needs

Weapons technology provides the decisive military capabilities for the future. It responds to the services' operational needs for cost-effective system upgrades and next generation systems in support of the top Joint Warfighting Capability Objectives (JWCOs) in the JWSTP. The Weapons technology activities directly support JWCOs of Precision Force, Joint Theater Missile Defense, Military Operations in Urban Terrain, Joint Countermine, Electronic Combat, Information Superiority, and Counterproliferation, and contribute support to Combat Identification. In addition, the Weapons technology program directly responds to congressional mandates (e.g., the live fire test provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (1987), Chapter 139, Section 2366 of Title 10, United States Code). Specific objectives of weapons technology programs address:

• The need for affordable all-weather, day/night precision strike against projected mobile and fixed targets.

• Gun/missile systems to support the development of advanced, lighter weight air/land combat vehicles and tanks, ship and vehicle self-defense systems, and lightweight high-performance gun systems for artillery applications and naval surface fire support missions.

• The capability to detect, identify, and jam RF weapon system sensors and advanced imaging/pseudo-imaging infrared (IR) missile seekers.
• Projecting lethal for ce precisely against an enemy with minimal friendly casualties and collateral damage.

• Development of adaptive technologies for advanced radar warning/electronic support receivers, processors, and modulation techniques that can respond/reconfigure to a changing RF environment.

• Effective mine detection and neutralization capability to permit movement of forces ashore during amphibious assaults and during movement on land.

• All-weather defense against low-observable cruise missiles, aircraft, and ballistic missiles.

• Disruption or destruction of missiles and projectiles in various phases of flight.

• Disruption or destruction of adversary communications and information systems.

• Control of space.

• Suppression of enemy air defenses.

• Undersea superiority through highly lethal underwater attack and defense capabilities against ASW/ASUW platforms at long range, in shallow water with weapons, counterweapons, and countermeasures with increased speed, reduced weight, and lower acoustic signature.

• Real-time integration of "on-platform" sensor information with off-platform theater/ battlespace information to yield situation assessment, threat geolocation, and decision aides to combat identification, targeting, and damage assessment objectives.

• The denial, degradation, and deception of enemy command, control, and navigation functions.

• The use of nonlethal technologies for a variety of missions.

Weapons technologies have transition potential to a wide variety of weapons system and platforms; Table X-1 illustrates some of these opportunities.

1.4 Support for Combating Terrorism

Weapons research and development activities are producing many new technological capabilities that can ultimately be used to help counter the growing terrorism threat to the United States and our allies. Technologies that can contribute to combating terrorism include advanced sensors and signal processing techniques including biological sensors, data fusion, autonomous robotic systems, multispectral imaging, directed-energy devices, simulation and modeling techniques, high-speed signal and image processing, automatic target recognition, tunable munitions that can produce variable-level target effects, low-cost precision munitions and miniature munitions that minimize collateral damage, aimable or adaptable warheads, guidance-integrated fuzing, enhanced penetration weapons, hard target fuzes, molecule development and explosive formulation for higher energy density and less sensitive explosives, techniques for reliably predicting target damage, and potential collateral effects and performance/utility of munitions and ordnance resulting in survivability/lethality improvements to material and personnel.

Directed-energy weapons (DEW) technology contributes to the counterterrorism effort through the aircraft self-protect DTOs (WE.19.08 and WE.42.08 for high-power microwave (HPM) and laser weapons technology, respectively) and the IRCM laser technology DTO (WE.43.08), all of which offer potential means to defeat shoulder-launched IR-guided missiles that may threaten U.S. and Allied large aircraft, both commercial and military. In addition, HPM technology developed for C²W/IW applications (DTO WE.22.09) can be used to defeat terrorist electronic systems, including communications hardware. There are also projects within the laser and HPM supporting technology efforts that are applicable to detection and neutralization of a variety of potential terrorist threats. Hardening technology developed under the HPM supporting technology efforts will help protect U.S. electronic systems from attack by terrorist C²W/IW systems.

The area of electronic warfare, by its very nature, is aimed at the real-time protection of the warfighter and associated combatant platforms from known/anticipated adversarial threats, in a given theater of world conflict (reference the definition of "Electronic Combat" in Chapter 4, Section H of the JWSTP). By contrast, the terrorist threat can be depicted in general terms as one using an unpredictable method of destruction, at an unpredictable location, and at an unpredictable time. As such conventional EW methods and technologies are applicable only if allowed sufficient intelligence, surveillance, and terrorist "trend" information. Aspects of offensive command and control warfare (C²W) in the EW subarea of mission support can contribute to developing a counterterrorism (CT) capability by adapting the C²W developments in the electronic support (ES) and electronic attack (EA) of modern communications networks that terrorist organizations may use. CT benefits could be realized in terms of these C²W contributions to intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) of the terrorist threat and in the disruption of his command and control structure/cycle.

Finally, ongoing landmine countermeasures research efforts offer a variety of solutions to the terrorist use of the mine threat. The Vehicle Mounted Mine Detector and Handheld Standoff Mine Detector systems employ infrared and ground-penetrating radar technologies for detecting metallic and nonmetallic antitank mines. Sensor fusion and automatic target recognition are being used to enhance detection speeds and to reduce false alarm rates. The mine hunter/killer, initiated in FY96, is a technology-based effort that will provide forward-looking detection and neutralization of landmines along routes. The Lightweight, Multispectral Airborne Mine Detector program that starts in FY98 will combine multiple sensors, detection algorithms, and processors to display, in real time, the locations of mines. This airborne system will be ideal for the detection of mines along routes long favored by terrorists as a means of interrupting commerce. The DoD Humanitarian Demining program also has an application to combat terrorism through its Mine Awareness Database that provides a description of more than 700 mines in a CD-ROM format to rapidly classify the threat. An effort is also underway to exploit "sniffing" technologies to detect explosive compounds in mines and other explosive devices. Lastly, there is a modeling and simulation effort in distributed interactive simulation (DIS) that may assist in training personnel and developing doctrinal approaches for utilizing promising technologies to combat terrorism.

A number of Weapons DTOs contribute to a counterterrorism thrust:

• WE.12.02—Antijam GPS Flight Test

• WE.17.02—Hammerhead

• WE.19.08—HPM Aircraft Self-Protect Missile Countermeasures

• WE.22.09—High-Power Microwave C²W/IW Technology

• WE.23.08—Modern Network Command and Control Warfare Technology

• WE.34.02—Objective Crew-Served Weapon Technology Demonstration

• WE.43.08—Advanced Multiband Infrared Countermeasures Laser Source Solution Technology

• WE.48.08—Missile Warning Sensor Technology

• B.15—Antimateriel Warhead Flight Test

• B.18—Low-Cost Precision Kill

• B.19—Cruise Missile Real-Time Retargeting

• B.21—Miniaturized Munition Technology Guided Flight Tests

• E.04—Non-Lethal Weapons Technical Demonstration

• All 10 Joint Countermine DTOs