HDAM clever

In my previous life, I would spend an embarrassing amount of time reading Soviet Military Power and imagining how this weapon system would fare against that defensive measure.

Danger Room found something that the former me would have called a game changer: GPS based radar suppression.

...in 1958 the U.S. introduced the Shrike, an "Anti-Radiation Missile" that homed in on enemy radar and proved invaluable in the Vietnam War. The modern successor is the AGM-88 HARM High Speed Antiradiation missile, which has longer range and a speed of over mach 2. "No U.S. aircraft has ever been lost to surface-to-air missiles when HARM has been flying cover," Mike Vigue, HARM Growth Manager at Raytheon, told me.

The problem with this type of missile is that it relies on the enemy radar being turned on. Once they spot a missile barreling towards them, the operators can turn off the radar so it has nothing to home in on. So the mission is known as Suppression of Enemy Air Defence or SEAD: you're not likely to kill them, but you can force enemy radar to shut down, making the skies safe for friendly aircraft.

All that changes when you can fit HARM with a GPS module that allows it to accurately pinpoint the location of the radar emitter. The addition means that even if the radar turns off, the missile can still hit it precisely.

Raytheon's upgrade is called HDAM, for HARM Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses Attack Module. It's being built for the Air Force. And it incorporates both GPS and an inertial measurement unit with a fiber-optic gyro.

Call me a weapon-geek, but that's just cool.