Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!cbnews!cbnews!military
From: jmasly@mainz-emh2.army.mil (John Masly)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Copperhead Artillery Projectile
Message-ID: <1991Feb22.231611.3606@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 22 Feb 91 23:16:11 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 54
Approved: military@att.att.com



From:     John Masly <jmasly@mainz-emh2.army.mil>
>msoques@mozart.AMD.COM (Martin Soques) writes:
>
>One of the "smart" weapons the US Army wants to use in Desert Storm
>is the Copperhead artillery round....  I also read/heard somewhere
>recently that when the US Army did a couple of test firings...in the
>Saudi desert, the shells missed so badly that the observers did not
>even know where the shells landed.

Could be.  The Copperhead (M712?) is indeed laser guided, but differs
greatly from the laser guided bombs being used to such great effect in
the KTO.  During a bombing run, the aircraft locks the laser designator
onto the target, and releases the munition.  The laser 'spot' is within
the munition's field of view (FOV) for most, if not all, of it's travel
to the target, so guidance is continuous from release to impact.  Not
so with the Copperhead.  The Copperhead is an unguided (ballistic)
round for a good portion of its travel to the target.  The laser seeker
is pointed at the sky or the far horizon for most of the trajectory. 
Not until the projectile is well along the descending limb of the
trajectory does the seeker point in a direction where it can acquire a
laser designator spot.  The longer it takes the seeker to acquire the
designator spot, the less time the projectile has to maneuver to hit
the target.  The somewhat small control surfaces on the Copperhead do
not provide any robust maneuvering forces, so the projectile can't 'fly'
very far in a short time.  These two factors limit the 'footprint' that
the Copperhead has for acquireing and hitting a target.

Now, add to this the fact that the laser designator is a man controlled
device.  If the guy is not pointing the designator at the right place at
the right time, the projectile isn't going to 'see' anything.  On top
of everything, since the maneuverability of the projectile is somewhat
limited, a lot depends upon the 'Cannon Cocker' 8-) who is firing the
Copperhead, getting the round into a 'basket' that allows the seeker
system to acquire the designator spot.

(Were we really going to use this system in Central Europe????!!!!)

By the way, the 'development' of this system is interesting.  As I
understand it (I could be wrong), the initial development was not done
by the the ammunition developers, but by the organization that was
concerned with the cannons.  They had some 'extra' money available one
year, so they decided to do a 'what if' study on guided artillery
projectiles.  The next year they did the same, and the next year, and the
next.......Lo and Behold!...one year the Army discovered that it had
spent so much on this developmental-what-if (that was not a budgeted line
item) that it would be political (and budgetary) suicide to admit that
it was a somewhat less than optimum weapon system.
..Voila!, the M712 Copperhead.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Masly,  Mainz Army Depot, Germany,  APO NY 09185
------------------------------------------------------------------------


Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com