The Fiberoptle Guided Missile (FOG-M)

Abstract

The Fiberoptic Guided Missile (FOG-M) was developed in the U.S. Army's Research, Development, and Engineering Center (RDEC) as a demonstration system for killing armor in an infantry application. The RDEC design uses a television sensor in the nose of the missile for in-flight target acquisition, bringing the video signal down a fiberoptic link that pays out behind the missile as it flies, to a gunner securely hidden in a defiladed launch vehicle. The gunner is able to select the target on a video screen and lock on an autotracker or alternately manually track the target to impact. The system design would use a common warhead for either armor or helicopter targets. The system is currently mounted on the High Mobility, Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV), containing the gunner's station, launcher, and flight missiles. The gunner's station includes the capability for detailed mission planning, digital map display based on the Defense Mapping Agency's digital map databases, and display of the air battle situation for the gunner. Automatic targeting, control of multiple missiles in the air simultaneously, navigation using a digital correlator, and autotracking of moving targets in cluttered backgrounds with gunner selectable offset tracking capability are also available. The system has a capability to train the gunner using a perspective view scene generator that mimics the video scene he would be presented during missile flight. The scene generator uses the same hardware that displays the digital map, while a simulation of the missile runs in one of the system's computer processors to accurately move the seeker presentation around the scene. All of the other hardware used in embedded training is the same as the actual firing hardware. The system concept has been chosen by the Army as the non-line-of-sight (NLOS) component of the Forward Area Air Defense System (FAADS). The initial design is being upgraded for the MIL SPEC environment to allow early operational evaluation by the user. The lessons learned by these tests will be used to aid the full scale development program beginning in FY88. This paper describes aspects of the system designed by the Army's RDEC, with special emphasis on the mechanics of fiberoptic datalink winding and payout concerns.