Non-Line of Sight Testing Helps Counter Small Boat Threat

By Allan Ashley, AMCOMNovember 5, 2008

The Navy's Littoral Combat Ship is a versatile platform capable of a range of missions in the littorals (coastline areas). One such mission is to successfully engage hostile Fast In-Shore Attack Craft. The shipboard fielding of the Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System will form a large part of the Navy's counter-FIAC mission.

NLOS-LS is a joint Army/Navy developed system that comprises 15 Precision Attack Missiles vertically launched from a Container Launch Unit. The shipboard application of NLOS-LS will consist of 4 integrated CLUs (totaling 60 missiles) installed into a LCS Mission Module, with up to 3 NLOS-LS Mission Modules per ship.

To optimize the missile's targeting electronics for all potential target sets, sea-based as well as ground-based NLOS-LS testing is conducted. In August, Navy Research and Development Test Teams (with Army support) successfully conducted Captive Flight Test N1B in the waters off of Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida panhandle.

A CFT involves mounting and flying the PAM seeker module and a test rack aboard a Redstone-supplied and crewed UH-1 helicopter and measuring seeker performance against pre-defined target sets. CFTs are used to establish seeker performance data and to evaluate algorithms and the missile tracker in a moving environment that is as close as possible to an actual missile terminal trajectory. CFT N1B leveraged the testing efforts from five previous CFTs conducted during the NLOS-LS System Development and Demonstration program phase which ultimately contributed to the design and development of the PAM seeker and software algorithms.

The main objectives of CFT-N1B were to evaluate the PAM seeker in acquiring and tracking targets against representative FIAC in warm waters using the Semi-Active Laser operated from a Navy helicopter (SH-60, from Naval Air Station, Jacksonville, Fla.), and to evaluate PAM Infrared seeker performance in the detection, acquisition and tracking of waterborne targets (moving and stationary). Successful conduct of CFT-N1B provided critical data needed to increase PAM accuracy and lethality in the at-sea threat environment.

The next Navy CFT will be in early 2009 and will evaluate seeker performance against small-boat targets in a different water environment.