When Technology Works For You

I give you the Spike missile, the version from the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAWCWD) at China Lake, not the rather more expensive ATGM produced by the Israeli company Rafael.

This Spike is a small (25"), light weight (2.5 kg) and very inexpensive (about 5000 lbs) that can be effective out to about 3200 m against relatively lightly armored targets. (The warhead weighs 1 pound)

It's not fast, being decidedly subsonic, and it leaves launch tube at around 100 mpg, which means no backblast.

What makes this missile different is that it was designed using technology to meet a cost goal, so the seeker is, basically a camcorder bolted to the front of a rocket motor, and it can launch at low speed because it relies on COTS processor for flight controls, which do not require high initial speed.

It locks on the target image, and so is fire and forget, a capability that has been in the US arsenal since the 1970s with the Maverick missile.

Another advantage of this system is that it can easily be carried by a UAV when targeting things like insurgents, with a much lower cost, and a much higher number of rounds on existing UAVs that carry Hellfires, or it could be mounted on much smaller UAVs.

It just goes to show that technology can be used to create a reasonably effective weapon at a very reasonable price.

Some PDF with more details are here and here.