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Aviation History
1988
1988 - 1347.PDF
LTV launches tactical missile The LTV-designed US Army tactical missile system has made a successful first launch and flight test at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. "Test objectives of the Army's new conventional artillery weapon were accomplished," says Col Tom Kunhart, the Army Tacms project manager. LTV plans another nine test firings of the 13ft-long, 2ft-diameter missile. The Army will then conduct its own series of test shots. To be fielded in the 1990s, Tacms is a deep-strike weapon which has evolved from the 1978 Assault Breaker con cept of attacking the enemy's rear echelons. The missile has four basic missions: • attack of rear - echelon armour formations, mechanised infantry and convoys; • destruction of high-pay-off targets such as helicopter refuelling and re-arming areas, ammunition dumps, and sur face-to-surface missile batteries; • destruction and disruption of enemy headquarters and their communication centres; • suppression of enemy air defences in joint-fire missions to clear a free lane for air strikes. Tacms' range is classified, but it is well in excess of the current Corps-level artillery missile, the Lance. The Tacms launcher is based on LTV's multiple-launch rocket system tracked vehicle, with two Tacms instead of six of the shorter-range rockets. At present the Tacms warhead consists of 1,000 M74 bomblets for the anti-per sonnel/anti-material role. "One of these warheads," says Gunter Riens, LTV's Tacms manager, "could wipe out a company-size target or severely disrupt and delay a battalion. Between four and six Tacms could kill a tank battalion." Other warheads for Tacms are being planned. In the near term a dedicated anti-armour round is being developed by Martin Marietta. In the longer term hard-target, runway- cratering, and mine-scattering warheads are under study. The hard-target round will have a one-charge warhead, while the anti-runway variant will deploy cratering submuni- tions, probably developed from the UK's SG.357. Both of these versions will have enhanced guidance, probably using global position ing system satellite data, and the hard-target warhead will probably use a terminal seeker. "With that we'll get the accu racy down to a few metres, but we'll still need to use several munitions to enhance the kill probability," says Riens. Proposed budget cut will "paralyse" Nasa Efforts in Congress to reduce Nasa's proposed $11-48 bil lion 1988-89 budget to $10-2 billion "will literally paralyse the programme and bring to a halt the 30 years of progress that began after the shock of Sputnik in 1957," says Nasa administrator Dr James Fletcher. "The civil space pro gramme would be stopped in its tracks," says Fletcher. "This year is already a make or break one. It is not a pretty prospect to imagine the US as a second rate, or even third rate, power in space. "Budget levels being pro posed would spell death to the Space Station." "The Nasa budget is less than 1 per cent of the entire Federal budget. It is probably the best investment we can make as a nation," Fletcher points out. "If we fail to make that investment, the fire and spirit will have gone from Nasa and the civil space pro gramme will have come to a grinding halt." Proton flies new profile The Soviet Union has demon strated a new flight profile for its Proton launch vehicle. This enabled a geostationary satel lite, Cosmos 1940, to reach station within 12|hr of launch, rather than the several days previously required. The profile has both commercial and military impli cations, according to Nicholas Johnson, Teledyne Brown's Soviet space analyst. Military satellites can be declared oper ational faster and spacecraft- positioning and station-keeping fuel can be saved, increasing lifetime in orbit. On the Cosmos 1940 flight Proton's DM fourth stage and LTV's Tacms missile is launched from a multiple-launch-rocket-system tracked vehicle payload entered a "phase orbit" and, after five revolutions, its engine fired for the first time, entering geostationary transfer orbit with the standard 47 • 5° inclination. The second burn came 5^hr later, resulting in the placement of Cosmos 1940 directly on station in geo stationary orbit (GEO) at 345° East. Before this flight, every Proton for the last 14 years had placed a satellite into GEO close to 90° East, and it had taken a varied period of drifting to achieve the intended posi tion. After the March launch of Gorizont 15, for example, the satellite took two weeks to reach station at 346° East. One of the Soviet Union's recent bids to launch a commer cial satellite for a Western customer included three flight profile options. In addition to direct place ment into the intended position, two other options were mentioned. In one the DM stage fires 80min after launch to place the payload into a 48° geostationary transfer orbit. This is the standard procedure for flights to 90° East. The D stage refires 5 • 3hr later, performing the required dog leg manoeuvre to almost zero inclination, placing the satellite at 150° East. The last option sees the DM stage perform its first burn to GTO after 15 revolutions, almost a day after launch. After two and a half orbits in GTO, the second burn results in place ment of the satellite at 157° East, 26hr after the first D-stage firing. FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 21 May 1988 13
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