AUSA 2012 : APKWS is Prepared for Life at Sea

The US Navy is preparing to send the BAE Systems-made Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) to sea, it has emerged.

A Rapid Deployment Capability (RDC) effort is underway by Naval Air Systems Command's PMA-242 office to fit the system to the MH-60S. The project comes on top of plans to also fit the weapon to the MQ-8 Fire Scout unmanned helicopter.

The plan is to give a carrier-based MH-60S a light strike capability against threats such as small boats. The weapon will be fired from a digital 19-round rocket pod, this will give the navy the opportunity to mix the rocket payload with guided and unguided rockets in zones giving crews an option with how to deal with incidents such as swarming boat attacks.

The RDC follows trials conducted in January of this year which saw APKWS rockets being dispatched against remote controlled targets in the waters off Point Mugu, California.

'We were assigned ten rockets, and two of them had explosive warheads, and we planned to use those two last,' explained Capt Brian Corey, programme manager of Direct and Time Sensitive Strike at NAVAIR, in an interview with Shephard at the AUSA 2012 convention in Washington DC on 22 October.

'But the rockets were so effective, the kinetic energy of the rocket meant that the boats were unserviceable before we were able to fire the war-head equipped rockets, but the tests were highly successful.'

APKWS is essentially a guidance system screwed onto the end of an unguided rocket. Once fired, four spring-loaded vanes open revealing the laser seekers, which then look for the splash of the laser on the target. The weapon can be fired from any helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft that can fire 2.75-inch rockets.

Currently, the weapon - designated WGU-59B in the US military - is operational on two platforms, the AH-1W Cobra and the AH-1Y of the United States Marine Corps, and the weapon is being actively used in theatre in Afghanistan, with around 100 rockets used on Enduring Freedom missions so far.

'The weapon is proving highly effective against targets that require a low-yield or have a high-risk of collateral damage.' said Corey. Corey said the learning curve for the weapon had been very steep, and that some pilots were steering the aircraft towards the target like they would if they were firing an unguided rocket, not required given its guided nature.

The simplicity of the weapon means it does not have to be integrated into the aircraft. On the Cobra and Venom (Huey) the aircraft are configured to carry the APKWS on one side of the aircraft and the unguided equivalent on the other.

BAE Systems recently completed its LRIP production run of 925 rounds and has now started the next production batch of 950, with the 1,000 weapon completed in September.

NAVAIR is now getting ready to conduct a Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD) program which is set to see APKWS fired from the AV-8B Harrier and A-10 Thunderbolt close air support aircraft. This could be extended further to include the F/A-18 Hornet and the F-16 Fighting Falcon. Work is now underway to determine what modifications might be needed to allow APKWS to be used on fast-jet aircraft, and whether those modifications would eventually create one single version of the weapon allowing it to be fired from either helicopters or fast jets.

Corey also confirmed there had been interest from seven countries in the system for use on a mix of helicopters and turboprop-driven light attack aircraft.