Letting the bats fly. (Digest).
April of this year saw the successful flight of Northrop
Grumman's Bat (Brilliant Anti-armor Submunition Any munition that, to perform its task, separates from a parent munition. ) from a US Army
Atacms carrier missile. The tests were preformed at White Sands Missile
Range White Sands Missile Range (WSMR), formerly known as the White Sands Proving Grounds, is a rocket range in New Mexico operated by the United States Army. The range covers an area of almost 3,200 mi² (8 287 km²), approximately three times the size of Rhode Island, making it in New Mexico New Mexico, state in the SW United States. At its northwestern corner are the so-called Four Corners, where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah meet at right angles; New Mexico is also bordered by Oklahoma (NE), Texas (E, S), and Mexico (S). , with a view to demonstrating the performance of the
Bat submunition against a moving array of armoured vehicles equipped
with countermeasures. Some of the submunitions were fitted with warheads
and some with flight data recorders The flight data recorder (FDR) is a flight recorder used to record specific aircraft performance parameters. A separate device is the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), although some versions (including the original) combine both in one unit. to substantiate pre-test modelling
and simulation projections. The autonomous Bat submunition uses a
combination of passive acoustic and infrared sensors to seek, identify
and destroy moving armoured targets, and it is currently in low-rate
initial production at Northrop Grumman's Land Combat Systems
facility.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Armada International
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 2002, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.
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