Interception system that employs miniature kill vehicles

Abstract

There is provided an interception system that employs miniature kill vehicles. According to certain embodiments of the invention, a small kill-vehicle (KV) accommodated within an interceptor missile together with additional at least one KV, each KV is equipped with an image acquisition sensor operable in the visible or near IR range, and adapted to be launched from the interceptor missile during exo-atmospheric flight and utilizing said sensor for tracking and homing at least one Re-entry Vehicle (RV) of a Ballistic Missile (BM).

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]This invention relates to a method and system for employing multiple kill vehicles (KV) designated to kill multiple Re-entry Vehicles (RVs) that are launched simultaneously towards a friendly territory.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]Ground to ground ballistic missiles (BM) have become an efficient weapon which can cause significant damage to military and civilian infra-structures, and thereby they serve as a strategic tool in favor of states which attack their enemies (either offensively or defensively as a result of an attack originated by the enemy). In light of this ever increasing threat, an anti missile technology has been developed, such as the “Arrow” anti-missile technology (deployed and used by the Israel Defense Forces) and others. The Arrow system is capable of tracking the oncoming ground to ground BMs and launch, e.g. from a protected territory, an interceptor missile which flies along a flight trajectory which substantially intercepts that...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0007]According to certain embodiments of the invention, the sensors that are employed in a Miniature Kill Vehicle (MKV) are in the visible or near IR spectrum instead of the IR part thus significantly improving the resolution for a given aperture by an order of magnitude. Visible or near IR sensors are also much smaller than the IR ones, they provide high resolution with a small aperture and they do not need cooled focal plane arrays. All this reduces the weight and cost of the sensor dramatically and it releases the requirements imposed on the divert system time constants allowing the MKV to maneuver more efficiently. Since the targets do not emit enough energy in the visible or near IR part of the spectrum, some illumination device should be added to the system.

[0031]In accordance with a certain embodiment of the invention there is yet further provided an interceptor missile, wherein at least two KVs are launched towards the same RV with a time delay between planned interceptions to increase the kill probability.

Problems solved by technology

Present Kill Vehicles (KV) are quite large, complicated and thus expensive.

These sensors are quite large and expensive.

Due to the small size of each MKV, the aperture d of the IR imaging sensor fitted thereon cannot be large.

The specified degraded resolution may result in missing the sweet spot thereby reducing the prospect of successful kill.

In addition, the degraded resolution may lead to an undesired result of failing to identify that the “target” that the MKV tracks is in fact two (or more) real targets (since due to the degraded resolution the MKV cannot distinguish between the two) and therefore even if it succeeds in hitting one of the targets the other or others (non distinguishable) targets could leak and hit the friendly territory leading to dire consequences.

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