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Considerable recent Army program, development activity has focused on providing warfighters with an expanded array of battlefield lethality effects-expanding a commander's combat options by placing "more arrows in the tactical quiver."
One arrow that has long been explored but yet to be placed in that quiver is the kinetic energy missile. Its latest technological iteration is the compact kinetic energy missile (CKEM). As with its immediate predecessor, the line-of-sight anti-tank (LOSAT) CKEM holds the promise of providing tomorrow's light forces with a mix of enhanced lethality and survivability.
During a program update presented at the October 2005 AUSA Annual Meeting, Buster Thrasher, CKEM business development manager for Lockheed Martin, provided a look at where the Army stands on the possible fielding of a future kinetic energy battlefield missile. "Some of you were familiar with the LOSAT program that was almost going to be fielded with the military," Thrasher began. "But because of cost constraints, the LOSAT program was closed out last year."
Under LOSAT program plans, the Army had projected fielding one Humvee-based LOSAT battalion (36 launchers) to each of the Army's five light infantry divisions. A total of 174 launch platforms would have been provided with approximately 1,500 missiles.
That design, now terminated, was just the latest attempt to integrate and field a kinetic energy weapon on the battlefield. Previous configurations had included late Cold War designs to place a LOSAT missile on a Bradley chassis, post-Operation Desert Storm designs placed on an M8 armored gun system and the 1998 development program to place LOSAT on a Humvee.
That LOSAT missile design had weighed 174 pounds and measured nine feet...