Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!bellcore!att!cbnews!military
From: howard@cos.com (Howard C. Berkowitz)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Tank Killing with Infra-Red 'Bomblets'
Summary: Sadarm == skeet?
Keywords: neato
Message-ID: <10222@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 14 Oct 89 01:56:04 GMT
References: <10110@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
Organization: Corporation for Open Systems, McLean, VA
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From: howard@cos.com (Howard C. Berkowitz)

In article <10110@cbnews.ATT.COM>, miles@ms.uky.edu (Stephen D. Grant) writes:
> 
> 1). A projectile (Missile, Shell) would be fired at the target to be killed
>     presumably a tank.
> 
> 2). Upon reaching it's altitude above the target, the shell cracks open
>     and releases a spinning 'dispenser'. The dispenser spins to build up
>     enough force to throw 4 bomblets outward at great distances.
> 
> 3). The bomblets disengage and fly away from the 'stalk'. Each bomblet has
>     micronized infra-red cicuitry and a small laser/infrared detector.
>     As the bomblets fly through the air, the detectors make a circular
>     sweep, as does the whole unit. 
>     to armor.
 [...]
> [mod.note:  What you've just described is called "Sadarm".  The "bullet"
> is more correctly called the "penetrator", and as you say, is explosively
> formed from the bomblet.  - Bill ]


I remember an Aviation Week piece several years ago about
an intelligent weapon, then under development under the Assault
Breaker program, called "skeet."  Skeet sounded rather similar
to the Sadarm, with two exceptions:

   1,  The target location and classification sensor
       used submillimeter wave radar, not infrared.

   2.  The explosive forming (called "self-forging"
       in the article) was selective:  if the sensors
       classified the target as armored, one of two
       explosive charges fired to forge the penetrator
       (which still contained an explosive charge,
        but which was now part of a shaped charge
        [i.e., Munro effect or HEAT munition]).

       If the target was classified as unarmored,
       both explosive charges fired together,
       so as to cause maximum fragmentation/blast
       damage to the target.

Assault Breaker, as people may or may not remember, is
the overall program for developing weapons to blunt
a massive Warsaw Pact tank assault on NATO. The Copperhead
laser-guided artillery round also was developed here.

Question:  are sadarm and skeet the same munition?  Is
sadarm the operational version, with different guidance
and lacking the selective explosive use?

Another program of the same vintage, of which I have not
heard anything, was called Axe.  This also was intended
to interfere with an initial Warsaw Pact invasion, but
was an anti-air rather than anti-armor weapon.

Axe involved placing a large number of missiles xDin
hardened silos, the location and contents of which would
be public, throughout Western Europe.  On detecting a
major Warsaw Pact strike in progress, the missiles would
be fired.

Their warheads contained runway-cratering submunitions.
The idea was to put temporarily out of service most or
all runways on which Warsaw Pact tactical aircraft could
recover -- after these same aircraft had sortied and
were still in the air.  The runways need be kept out of
service only for the projected sortie time, when the
aircraft would have to return.

Anyone know if this project went anywhere?
-- 
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