With an increasing accent on delivering effects with minimal collateral damage, and at lower acquisition and operational cost, interest is growing for ever-smaller precision weapons. One of the leaders in the field is the Weapon & Sensor Systems business of Textron Systems, which is developing two weapons that are expected to be the first members of a growing family.
The smallest of the two is the Fury glide weapon that weighs just 12.5 pounds, allowing its carriage by a range of unmanned aerial s and manned aircraft. It employs semi-active laser and selective availability anti-spoofing module GPS guidance, as well as tri-mode fusing that can be programmed to provide maximum effect against various target sets. At present, the fusing has to be programmed on the ground, but in the future a mid-air programming function is planned.
Three Fury weapons can be carried on a rack that fits on to a standard Hellfire launcher, allowing multiple weapons to be carried by platforms such as the Predator/Reaper and AT-6 Wolverine light attack platform. It has been successfully launched in demonstrations from the Shadow 200 and Shadow M2 UAVs, and another demonstration will take place this summer against a moving target.
A larger weapon under development is the G-CLAW, which builds on the clean area weapon (CLAW) blast-fragmentation unitary area munition by adding guidance capability. The 50-pound weapon has a 20-pound warhead that packs a powerful punch after detonation by a height-of-burst fuse.
G-CLAW can be carried on racks for both internal and external carriage, such as a four-weapon rack under the wing of the Scorpion light jet. Alternatively, it is sized for the common launch tube (CLT) that has been adopted by U.S. Special Operations Command for a variety of platforms. The CLT allows munitions to be ejected into the airflow from within the aircraft or from a weapons bay.
In the CLT application the G-CLAW ejects backwards from the tube before righting itself and gliding to the target. This has already been demonstrated with a drop from a Cessna Caravan. Rack launch has been performed from an AT-6.
These initial tests were performed with GPS guidance only, but later this summer G-CLAW will be demonstrated with the semi-active laser guidance as well.
