The Wide Area Munition/Hornet M93
TACOM Commander Maj. Gen. John S. Caldwell Jr. recently granted Conditional Materiel Release approval for the Wide Area Munition/Hornet M93.
The Hornet is the first U.S. Army autonomous, smart munition to achieve this milestone.
The munition will now be issued for use to the U.S. Army Forces Command's 82nd Airborne Division. Hornet will provide to the soldiers of the 307th Engineer Battalion, the capability and firepower to delay, disrupt, and defeat all enemy heavy armored threats.
Hornet is managed by the Project Manager for Mines, Countermine, and Demolitions and produced by Textron Systems, Wilmington, MA. The TACOM-ARDEC team provided critical engineering support during development of this system.
The Hornet was originally designed as an Autonomous Top Attack Weapon to defeat Soviet mine clearing vehicles attempting to clear conventional anti-tank minefields. The mission has evolved into its current roles as a lightweight, quickly deployable, anti-armor system for early entry forces, constrained by time and resources. The Hornet is designed to operate in either a remote mode or in a manual mode. It is carried to an emplacement site and pre-armed. Following the pre-arm sequence, the soldier leaves the area. If in the manual mode it will arm with-in a preset time. If in the remote mode it will wait for a command from the M71, Remote Control Unit.
Following arming, the munition enters a low power; cyclic listen mode with one acoustic sensor. Upon detecting a potential threat, the munition enters an alert state wherein all three acoustic sensors plus a seismic sensor are activated. The threat vehicle is then tracked and classified. If a valid target is present and is predicted to have a closest point of approach of 100 meters or less, an engagement solution is established. At the proper time, the sublet is launched to engage the target from the top. It arms during flight and scans for an infrared signature. When the target is detected, the sublet fires an explosively formed penetrator to hit the target's vulnerable area and cause a mobility kill. In the event the sublet does not detect the target within four seconds of launch, it self-destructs.
“The Hornet is far more than a new 'mine,'” says Col. Bud Irish, project manager for Mines, Countermine and Demolition. “It is a munition that provides a leap ahead in lethality. It adds sensors to the munition providing a force protection capability to the Army's transformation forces and the ability to launch the lethal mechanism significantly reduces the logistics footprint. The command and control system is designed to interface with the tactical Internet. This program is a textbook example of providing the capability needed to support our forces now and as part of the objective force of the future.”
Photos courtesy PM-MCD
A soldier removes the Hornet from its packaging.
