Anti-tank Kinetic Energy Projectiles | HIGH VELOCITY MISSILES

Hyper-Velocity Missile, was an anti-tank missile developed during the 1980s. The HVM carried no warhead and killed its targets with kinetic energy alone using a metal rod penetrator. Development as an air-launched weapon for the A-10 Thunderbolt II ended sometime in the late 1980s but continued for helicopter use into the 1990s along with ground-launched (HMMWV) as the larger MGM-166 LOSAT. None of these systems was operationally deployed.

LOSAT developed out of an earlier Vought project, the HVM. HVM was a multi-platform weapon supported by the US Air Force, for their A-10, and by the US Army and US Marine Corps, for helicopters and other vehicles. HVM offered performance similar to existing systems like the AGM-114 Hellfire but offered a semi-fire-and-forget operation through the use of FLIR tracking and guidance commands sent to it via a low-power laser. It could be carried on any platform that had FLIR support, with the self-contained command guidance system able to be carried externally, or potentially integrated into existing target designators. With the end of the Cold War, the Air Force pulled out of the project, and development work on HVM appears to have ended in the late 1980s.

At about the same time, in 1988, the Army released a new requirement for a ground-based anti-tank system, known as Advanced Anti-Tank Weapon System - Heavy, or AAWS-H for short. AAWS-H specified an air-liftable lightweight system with the capability to knock out any existing or near-future tank outside its own gun range. The TOW missile could be guided from concealed locations, but did not offer the needed range and its relatively slow flight speeds (~250 m/s versus 1650 for HVM) left it vulnerable to counterattack from the target while the missile was in flight.

The MGM-166 LOSAT (Line-of-Sight Anti-Tank) was a United States anti-tank missile system designed by Lockheed Martin (originally Vought) to defeat tanks and other individual targets. Instead of using a High Explosive Anti-Tank warhead like other anti-tank missiles, the LOSAT employed a solid steel kinetic energy penetrator to punch through armor. The LOSAT is fairly light; it was designed to be mounted onto a Humvee while allowing the vehicle to remain air-portable. LOSAT eventually emerged on an extended-length heavy-duty Humvee with a hard-top containing four KEMs used by special operations. Although LOSAT never "officially" entered service, it was used for the smaller Compact Kinetic Energy Missile.

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Anti-tank Kinetic Energy Projectiles | HIGH VELOCITY MISSILES