Author(s)

M. Graswald, I. Shaydurov & H. Rothe

Abstract

The protection of military camps that are subject to attacks by rockets, artillery projectiles, or mortar grenades (RAM) is currently in the spotlight of Western nations involved in overseas missions. Due to its worldwide distribution and good combat properties for guerilla warfare, mortars are likely to be applied and therefore selected as RAM threat in this paper. For this case, camp safety shall be ensured by an early warning system and an air defense weapon system using 35 mm Ahead ammunition. For both systems, a key to success is the accuracy of the sensors used, namely the radar. Therefore after providing the mathematical background, simulations are conducted in order to find the variations of the hit point of mortar shells.Moreover, the consumption of Ahead ammunition to engage and destroy typical 82 mm grenades is estimated. From these results, the suitability of present radar sensors and air defense systems and the technical requirements of future weapon systems can be derived. Keywords: rockets artillery mortar (RAM), 35 mm Ahead ammunition, radar sensor, exterior ballistics, terminal ballistics, probability calculation, error propagation, circular error probability, ammunition consumption. 1 Introduction Accomplished missions of the Western military e.g. in Iraq or Afghanistan in the recent past have shown that the safety of military camps is not sufficient. This is because suitable weapon systems protecting the military installations against this new asymmetric threat do currently not exist. Furthermore, these RAM attacks by guerillas or terrorists are frequently undertaken from urban area and therefore, the rules of engagement do usually not allow counterstrikes. Primarily, mortar grenades of 60 and 82 mm caliber and unguided 107 mm rockets are distributed

Keywords

rockets artillery mortar (RAM), 35 mm Ahead ammunition, radar sensor, exterior ballistics, terminal ballistics, probability calculation, error propagation, circular error probability, ammunition consumption.