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DAHLGREN, Va. – On Sept. 3, 2020, Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division’s (NSWCDD) Hypervelocity Gun Weapon System (HGWS) successfully demonstrated its ability to shoot down adversarial fire within the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) On-Ramp 2 demonstration at White Sands Missile Range in White Sands, New Mexico.
Not long after, a video of the HGWS demonstration was released on Twitter, highlighting the lethality and efficiency of the system.
“I was fortunate enough to participate in the bulk of the test events,” said Hamish Malin, chief engineer for NSWCDD’s Advanced Hypersonic Weapons and Guided Munitions Division. “As an engineer, you can know in your heart-of-hearts that something works from the walk up tests, but that’s very different from actually seeing it come together and watching a real threat drop out of the sky.”
The ABMS program is designed to protect certain military assets against threats. The program is sponsored by the U.S. Air Force, and helps advance the Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) mission to demonstrate command and control functions over all physical and cyber spaces. If adopted in a tactical ABMS system, HGWS’s mission would reside under the ABMS umbrella.
“HGWS was operated independently of all other ABMS sensors in this demonstration, but interacted with the ABMS grid of sensor information,” said Malin. “In this demo, we connected the greater system to HGWS fire control and showed that we can pipe information in and out. Its recent success has allowed the ABMS project to embrace it as a subcomponent. Now the project can leverage HGWS as part of this larger JADC2 vision.”
HGWS is a “system of systems” designed to use a variety of guns to fire hypervelocity projectiles. Originally, the system was developed for cruise missile defense missions. HGWS has been in development for eight years through the Strategic Capabilities Office.
“The Hypervelocity Gun Weapon System (HGWS) has the potential to support JADC2 in the areas of information sharing and threat engagement. During the ABMS On-Ramp 2 exercise, HGWS shared track information across the domain, permitting the battlefield commander to direct HGWS to engage a surrogate cruise missile,” said Nick Reynolds, HGWS lead systems integrator and Dahlgren program director.
The system uses conventional artillery – like the Navy’s five-inch gun or Railgun, or the Army’s 155 millimeter guns – to intercept and eliminate airborne threats. The system has the ability to share information, as well as engage threats.
“HGWS is a defensive capability to combat inbound adversarial cruise missiles,” said Malin. “In essence, it’s used to track, engage, and eliminate inbound threats, in particular cruise missiles and cruise missile raids.”
The tracks send to the projectile through a datalink, which then uses the radar system to confirm the information and its relationship to the threats.
The NSWCDD team has led the development of Hypervelocity Projectiles (HVP) since 2012, and has provided expertise in support of the vendor’s projectile development efforts for the last five years.
“Every subsystem of HGWS was developed under the leadership of Dahlgren personnel. The DoD [Department of Defense] couldn’t reach the program’s goals without the technical expertise that resides here at Dahlgren,” said Dr. Josh Clarke, NSWCDD guided munitions technical director.
The 105 person HGWS team represented in 14 different organizations was onsite at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico during the ABMS On-Ramp 2 test.
“HGWS has been a great developmental pull for our scientists and engineers, giving them hands-on experience in system testing and development of new weapon systems,” said Reynolds. “From the radars and the fire control system to the projectile, almost all of the designs originated at Dahlgren in one form or another.”
As Lead System Integrator, Reynolds was responsible for the overall planning and execution of the demonstration. The Sept. 3, 2020 exposition was the first HGWS integration within the greater construct of ABMS.
Due to regulations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Clarke was accountable for both the overall execution of the demonstration, as well as the health and safety of everyone involved. No one who participated in the demonstration caught the virus.
“It’s important for the Navy to be involved with these Air Force-funded demos because the technology we’re developing can be implemented onboard naval ships,” said Clarke. “If we take HGWS’s fundamental technology and integrate it into the fire control system of a ship, we can dramatically improve fleet asset survivability against dense missile raids by using bullets to shoot down missiles.”
“This whole concept of shooting down missiles with a gun was just a PowerPoint slide idea in 2013. The fact that we actually did it in 2020 is impressive from a science and technology standpoint,” said Clarke. “It was a nationwide effort.”
A video of the demonstration is available at https://twitter.com/DoDCTO/status/1305925038839861249
| Date Taken: | 02.11.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 02.18.2021 08:22 |
| Story ID: | 389275 |
| Location: | DAHLGREN, VA, US |
| Web Views: | 79 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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