Hunting Mobile Missiles with MASSM

http://breakingdefense.com/2015/01/stopping-mobile-missiles-top-picks-for-offset-strategy/

Under the new offset strategy, MALD, or a similar micro-jet, could be re-fashioned into a new Miniature Autonomous Search and Strike Missile (MASSM), a much-improved successor to LOCAAS. MASSM would be as stealthy as practical and would feature LIDAR, millimeter wave radar, and an imaging infrared sensor. With soft targets such as missiles on TELs in mind, MASSM would require a very modest warhead, leaving more space and weight for electronics and fuel. Satellite communications capability would enable controllers to redirect MASSMs during their missions and allow the missiles to report their search results.

Very interesting - although it doesn't address the way you would find the TELs in the first place. The sensor suite needed for wide-area search is more like a SAR/GMTI. LIDAR would be useful in discriminating targets.

as for the statement

When mass-produced, a LOCAAS missile would have cost about $75,000, far less than its intended targets.

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That's a really low (and suspicious) number! especially since the missile has these multi-mode seekers and a turbojet engine. Seems like the kind of thing you'd say to make people believe you can just expend the missiles and not care whether they find targets or not.

MALD can cover over 900 kilometers in 45 minutes before exhausting its fuel. The Air Force purchased a recent batch of MALDs for about $322,000 per unit.

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The author probably means 900 km squared. But yeah, that price tag is more likely to grow for a version with more sensors necessary to locate the TELs.

MASSM would be as stealthy as practical and would feature LIDAR, millimeter wave radar, and an imaging infrared sensor. With soft targets such as missiles on TELs in mind, MASSM would require a very modest warhead, leaving more space and weight for electronics and fuel. Satellite communications capability would enable controllers to redirect MASSMs during their missions and allow the missiles to report their search results.

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I wonder what kind of "reporting" they have in mind. It would be a pain to include satcom C2 comms in a small airframe, and the bandwidth, power, and antenna requirements go up if you need to send imagery back. Let's not even consider full motion video, or HD video which would be useful to positively ID a target.

DARPA has also proposed a project to recover drones in flight; MASSMs that don’t find suitable targets would be recovered and reused.

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You don't "simply" recover missiles. You need a mothership, which by the way, cannot get too close to the TELs because there's going to be an IADS all around it, so the MASSM has to fly at least 400 nmi out of indian country. So you have to decide whether you want to continue searching or saving enough fuel to make it back. Next, the missile must be equipped with whatever devices are required to mate with the mothership, so that takes away from the payload it can carry.

I dunno, this all sounds pretty nifty, but there's holes in the CONOPs that remain are unaddressed.

There was an old Sweetman article about the French Neuron and it's LIDAR sensor. According to Sweetman, the Neuron would constitute the SEAD/DEAD portion of the French airforce, it would be sent to autonomously hunt and kill SA-20 batteries. Stealth allows for persistence and LIDAR helps discriminate between launchers and decoys.

I think the general idea in the article makes sense: using some form of persistent search to pin down high value launchers. The numbers, however, do not. A single saturation mission using 300 MALDs at a hopelessly optimistic 100,000$ each costs 30 million. Compared to other strike activities, that is not outrageous. That is, until you realize that you spent 30 million to achieve ~1 hour's worth of coverage. If the carrier group is sortieing into strike distance, you may need 30 hours of coverage for the whole mission: 10 hours in, 10 hours striking, 10 hours out. Now your reasonable costs starts getting a bit larger, a billion dollars for that mission.

TACIT RAINBOW is spinning in it's grave.