In recent years, precision guided weapons play more and more important role in modern war. One of the greatest strengths of a precision strike missile is a reduction in the number of weapons or aircraft sorties required to destroy a target. Strategy Analytics forecasts the global Smart Weapons (SW) market will grow to over $41.8 billion in 2025, representing a CAGR of 3.7%. A renewed emphasis on advancing Smart Weapon capabilities to counter evolving threats such as A2/AD (anti-access Area Denial) envelopes, combined with on-going demand from asymmetric wars and continued force modernizations in emerging countries is driving spending across the full range of Smart Weapons.
Precision guided weapons may include a variety of imaging or non-imaging sensors to detect and track potential targets. Sensors used to guide projectiles to an intended target are commonly referred to as seekers. One of the key contributors to the missile accuracy, lethality, and adverse weather capability of precision strike missiles is the advancements in missile seekers.
Seekers may operate in various portions of the electromagnetic spectrum, including the visible, infrared (IR), microwave, and millimeter wave (MMW) portions of the spectrum. Some projectiles may incorporate multiple sensors that operate in more than one portion of the spectrum. A seeker that incorporates multiple sensors that share a common aperture and/or common optical system is commonly called a multimode seeker.
Infrared homing is a passive weapon guidance system which uses the infrared (IR) light emission from a target to track and follow it. Infrared seekers are passive devices, which, unlike radar, provide no indication that they are tracking a target. This makes them suitable for sneak attacks during visual encounters, or over longer ranges when used with a forward looking infrared system or similar cuing system. This makes heat-seekers extremely deadly; 90% of all United States air combat losses over the past 25 years have been due to infrared-homing missiles.
India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) successful test-firing on 27 March 2019 of its first anti-satellite (ASAT) missile that destroyed one of the country’s own satellites in space was also based on IIR seeker. Secretary DRDO, Satheesh Reddy stated that the 13 m-high, three-stage interceptor missile, which was fitted with two solid-propellant rocket motor stages and a hit-to-kill capable ‘Kill Vehicle’ (KV), was employed to target the satellite under ‘Mission Shakti’ (Strength).
The KV’s onboard advanced terminal guidance system, which featured a strap-down (non-gimballed) imaging infrared (IIR) seeker and an inertial navigation system that used ring-laser gyroscopes (RLGs), detected and tracked the 740 kg Microsat-R Earth observation satellite at an altitude of 283 km in low-Earth orbit (LEO). Reddy explained that after the two rocket motor stages had taken the ASAT missile to the required height and velocity, the nose tip heat shield was ejected and the IIR seeker, located within the very front of the nose, locked onto the target satellite, guiding the KV towards it at a “closing speed” – the velocity of the target and KV combined – of 10 km per second.
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