Helmut-Schmidt-University / University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg. Proc. of SPIE Vol.
6955. – 12 р.Military camps in out-of-area missions arc permanently threatened by rockets, artillery projectiles, and mortar grenades (RAM) launched by terrorists. A good portion of these attacks are undertaken by mortars due to their specific advantages for the warfare of irregular forces and their worldwide distribution. The military installations can be protected by counter-R AM systems consisting of several artillery weapons, radar and electro-optical sensors. C2 and fire control computers. A system analysis has shown that the precision of the sensors is vital for defending the camp with low ammunition consumptions. Furthermore, the type of ammunition is also of great impact: 35 mm Ahead ammunition is hardly suited for this application due to its small hit density and low kinetic energy of the sub-projectiles, especially in the case of mortar grenades. Therefore, 155 mm high-explosive (HE) ammunition is investigated using experimentally determined fragment data. Russian mortar projectiles arc considered as worst-case RAM targets and their ballistics are mathematically modeled by an air drag function that is also used for computing firing tables. Due to uncertainties of the target positions that arc given by an elliptic cylinder for specific sensor parameters, simulations are conducted in order to determine the ammunition consumption. Penetration and detonation criteria for the terminal impact arc also considered and the resulting thresholds are displayed in a 3D fragment map. The results show that HE ammunition is superior to low-caliber ammunition because of their high numbers of effective fragments reducing the number of rounds significantly from hundreds to less than ten.
