Replacing Hellfire with Brimstone: the case for a limited off-the-shelf procurement.

Congressman Mac Thornberry’s interview in today’s Breaking Defense covers a lot of ground on what’s wrong with oversight and legislation and process in the American military procurement system. But in contrast to Mac’s emphasis and Ash Carter’s memorable view, I find some of the problems cultural, and not merely administrative. Part of this resides in an almost chauvinistic assumption, well beyond legislated strictures like the Buy American Act, that every new American weapons should be designed in America from scratch. I’ve been arguing against American reinvent-the-wheel efforts like the Army’s AMPV project. Here, I’ll turn to the missile business.

Over the past week in The Defense Industrialist column at the Atlantic Council, I authored a two-part series on “avoiding another joint acquisition”, in that refreshing line from a senior civil servant with the USAF. The second essay pivoted to a particular instance of joint acquisition gone awry, the now joint-in-name-only Joint Air-to-Ground Missile, or JAGM. While the US Army is continuing to pursue a replacement for the AGM-114 Hellfire missiles on its helicopters, the US Navy, the USMC, and the USAF still lack a small precision-attack missile for their fast jets. The Navy, at least, is starting to entertain the idea that it needn’t ask American industry for another clean-sheet weapon design, when a firm in an allied country has a ready solution.

That is, a few weeks ago, I took in a briefing from the folks at MBDA UK about their effort to replace Hellfire with Brimstone. (I just love that line.) Their press coverage has been good over the past few weeks (see especially Colin Clark, “Eye On Fewer Drone Civilian Deaths, MBDA Challenges Lockheed, Raytheon With Brimstone Missile,” Breaking Defense, 23 October 2013; and Sandra I. Erwin, "European Missile Manufacturer Eyes Bigger Share of U.S. Market,” National Defense, November 2013) , but the story is worth recounting here. MBDA’s argument to this potentially new customer rests substantially on four points:

Greater accuracy. The latest dual-mode Brimstone combines semi-active laser and millimeter-wave radar guidance for greater accuracy, and the results have been impressive. The Royal Air Force has reported a 98 percent strike rate in 300 firings over Afghanistan and Iraq. It is almost fair to say, as MBDA’s business development director Douglas Denneny says, "that this missile does not miss.”

More platforms, greater employment envelope. As noted, Brimstone is strengthened for launch from fast jets, which Hellfire is not, and JAGM will not be. I find it remarkable that the Navy, the USMC’s, and the USAF’s primary close air support weapons today are cannons for strafing, and bombs. That means either hazarding a fast jet at low altitude, or destroying small targets with very large blasts. It also means attacking targets with helicopters and propeller-driven drones when a high-altitude jet may be more suitable, or just the only thing that can get there in time.

Fairly, I must mention the AGM-65 Maverick missile. It’s accurate, lethal, and has been proven in battle from the Vietnam and Yom Kippur Wars (1973) to the Campaign Against Qaddafi (2011). It just happens to weigh four to five times what a Brimstone does. As expensive as fast jets are, finding ways to load them with more rounds goes a long way to improving their effectiveness.

More focused effects. While the Hellfire "explodes and generates a large and deadly field of fragments” (and here I am quoting the press above), Brimstone “uses a shaped charge and destroys the target with a much contained explosion that generates relatively little debris.” For the big targets, there will still be bombs with big blasts, or perhaps those Mavericks. I’ll get back to this point below.

Multiple targets per pass. MBDA has an impressive video in which ship-launched Brimstones destroy multiple small craft without doubling-up and without cross-links. The technical solution is elegant: the N-th missile off the rail takes the target at the N-th distance from the centroid of the target area. Brimstones on Tornados can make up to six of these sorts of engagements per pass. While the missile was designed in the late 1990s, this requirement of a Fulda Gap sort is both an impressive achievement and a handy capability for defending naval vessels from swarming small boats.

(Fairly, the other side might develop tactics in which the swarming ingressors swap positions to confuse the outbound missiles. But this would be part of the back-and-forth of any development of technologically-spurred naval tactics.)

Now, combine all these features. Greater accuracy, the shaped-charge warhead, and the greater standoff of fast jets should generally mean fewer collateral casualties. As much work as modern militaries undertake to reduce collateral casualties, that’s an important feature.

There is the question of cost. MBDA’s competitor Raytheon asserts that Brimstone’s price in the US will be somewhere between $150,000 and $170,000 per missile. In Britain, the price is about £105,000 each, or just about $170,000, for rather lower production lots than one might expect for the US. Still, that is rather above the going rate for a Hellfire, and the actual cost of a JAGM hasn’t been settled. Brimstone’s greater accuracy, however, means fewer rounds expended, and thus less money spent overall. It’s also important to note that Her Majesty’s Government is not requesting any funding of the development and integration effort. For those who pay attention to these things, MBDA is proposing to assemble the missiles in Alabama, and to source everything aft of the seeker in the US.

But most notably, whatever the cost, it’s suitable for fast jets, and there’s no equivalent in the US inventory today. Brimstone is in the inventory in Britain, it’s in production, and it has been repeatedly proven in battle. From where I sit, if you can find the money for the purchase, this one should be worth a look, and not another not-invented-here dismissal.

Comments

[Dave Foster]

Jim,

Buy America has restricted our operational flexibility in many cases. I know, I know, the business of DoD is really business and not war, which is a once in a while thing, and so keeping the in-house military-industrial-congressional complex thriving is, indeed, job one.

US tacair does have some current intermediate options between cannon and a 500# JDAM or LGB.

For the Navy/Marines, a 500# JDAM or LGB with the BLU-126 warhead is an option (about 550# overall for the all-up-round[AUR]). The -126 is mostly inert material with a wee-bit of HE (27#) in the tail end near the rear fuze well. There's so little "boom" that sometimes it is hard tell if the thing went high-order. Thus, you can put 27# (plus the explosive weight of the fuze) of HE, a lower energy frag/blast pattern, and all of the usual kinetic energy near a target with JDAM or LGB accuracy.

The USAF's F-15Es, and, theoretically at least, the F-22s, have the SDB I/GBU-39 (a bit under 300# for the AUR), which has about 50# of HE in its warhead. The SDB I is a screamer and can get thru a few feet of reienforced, standard compressive strength concrete - in cases of soft targets the warhead penetration can lead to some of the explosion attenuating in the ground - no prox fuze capability to my knowledge tough Boeing is advertising a Laser SDB (I?) with an airburst capability - I don't know if this system is fielded anywhere. The utility of a bit of offset for warhead initiation is well understood for many soft targets in many operational contexts

If you want an airburst from an LGB, you'll need Raytheon's Enhanced Paveway II.

JDAM can be fitted with the DSU-33 sensor. Boeing is advertising a development project for a prox sensor capability for Laser JDAM.

To acquire Brimstone, the U.S. tacair fleets will need to integrate that triple rack and modify their targeting software but the various air HQs should conduct a serious trade study w Brimstone against the previous JCM/JAGM target set and a suitable subset of the SDB II target set.

On the Brit's ASuW test with Brimstone - the U.S. Navy should take that seriously for LCS, among others. Surface-launched Griffin and Firescout-launched APKWS are not likely to perform as well in other than a 1v1 scenario, and even then...

Finally, don't forget to add the early 1990's JAWS missile to the ancestry; JAGM is the third in the line of failed replacements for TOW & Hellfire).

[Thinkdefence]

Hi James

There is also Brimstone 2 which includes a range of improvements and is currently contracted by the UK

http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2013/10/mbda-brimstone-2-anti-armour-boss-marches/
http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2013/06/brimstone-anti-fiac-salvo-fire/

I wrote a long piece on Brimstone...

http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2013/04/uk-complex-weapons-part-1-brimstone-missile/

Have you read about the Lightweight Multirole Missile

The Royal Navy will arm the Wildcat with them and hopefully, it will find its way on to surface vessels. What makes it interesting is the beam riding guidance that is designed to work against low reflective targets like rubber boats that present problems for semi active laser guidance

http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2013/04/uk-complex-weapons-part-3-lightweight-multirole-missile/

[Elsie]

Nice Article
http://procurement.uonbi.ac.ke/

[Terry]

Hello
I have read the piece on Brimstone the previous orator posted a link to, and it is relly intersting how it has changed over the years.
As for Brimstone 2, I really didn't know it is contracted by UK, thanks for the info.
I totally agree with David that the US fleets will have to modify their targeting software if they want to acquire it. I am currently interested in military software development, I believe it is a promising field and going to try it out with my team.
By the way, they conducted missile test in June, here is the report.