‘Missiles in a Box’ Kills First Moving Test Target

The Army’s $160-billion Future Combat Systems “meta-program” is dead, dead, dead. In April, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates tore up the program’s planned fleet of lightly-armored, overly-vulnerable ground vehicles. The rest of the project quickly unraveled.
FCS’s ignominious demise belies an important fact. The program included lots of bits and pieces that are still useful and performing to spec. Those efforts will likely continue under slightly different management, while the Army rejiggers its overall modernization plans. Among the survivors of FCS’s collapse is the billion-dollar Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System — the so-called “Missile in a Box.” This impressive bit of tech passed an important test at the White Sands test range in New Mexico this week, when one of its 100-pound missiles flew five miles and destroyed a T-72 tank traveling in a convoy of several other vehicles.

Missiles in a Box is a collaboration between Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, doesn’t look like much. Popular Mechanics compared the 1.5-ton launcher to a “Port-O-Potty-size crate.” The individual missiles are packed 15-to-a-box and can be left lying around on the ground, carted around on flat-bed trucks or even installed on the Navy’s shore-hugging Littoral Combat Ships. The launcher stays logged onto a network via the newfangled, “universal” Joint Tactical Radio System. Soldiers, drones or choppers send a target’s coordinates to the launcher, out pops a missile (or five, or 15). The missile gets an update while en route, in case the target is moving — and can even pass back pictures of the bad guys. Each projectile can home in with laser, infrared or GPS guidance, and “dial” its warhead to kill armored or unarmored targets.

“”The ability of the [NLOS-LS] missile to defeat a moving target is a first for the U.S. Army,” said Col. Doug Dever, the Army project manager. He said Missiles in a Box will give soldiers the ability to “precisely engage moving targets” on their own — “a capability they’ve never had before.”

Missiles in a Box is proof that, even with a disastrous scheme like FCS, you’ve got be careful not to throw out the technological baby with the programmatic bathwater. Besides NLOS-LS, FCS spurred the development of lots of useful stuff, from new hybrid engines to tough ground robots and protocols for seamlessly linking ground troops with other military forces. That gear will probably still be winning battles and saving American lives, long after FCS is forgotten.
Wired