Enter the AARGM: No place to hide from this missile

In the beginning there was HARM (high-speed anti-radiation missile). Now, there's AARGM (advanced anti-radiation guided missile), and SAMs that could earlier stay out of HARM's way, now have no place to hide.

The AGM-88E AARGM is a medium range, supersonic, air-launched tactical missile whose primary job is to attack and kill enemy radars. The Italian Air Force says it wants to buy up to 250 of these unpronounceables, worthy successors to the AGM-88 HARMs. Even the US Navy and Marines want to buy 1,750 of these tongue twisters. Germany is in the queue, too.

Why, you may ask, is a long thin tube with fins that goes after inanimate radars such a big deal? To understand that, cast your mind back to the 1999 US and NATO air campaign over Kosovo and Serbia, and remember how an antiquated SA-3 Serbian surface-to-air missile (SAM) unit managed not only to survive the blitz, but to shoot down an F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter-bomber; something no one else had ever managed to do before.

In 1999, Col Dani Zoltan was the Serbian commander of the 3rd battery of the 250th Missile Brigade near Beograd, equipped with 1960s-built SA-3 SAMs. He tweaked the unit, making technical modifications to enable engagement of low-radar cross section (RCS) targets like stealth fighter and bombers.

Col Zoltan also trained his unit to use the shortest possible radiation bursts of the fire-control radar, as well as engage targets only within the launch zone, to reduce the possibility of detection of the radar (and consequent counter-measures), to reduce the time of flight of the SAM missiles and, consequently, the reaction time available to the target aircraft.

It was rigid radio frequency (RF) discipline that contributed to the 3rd battery's survival and success. The unit suffered no human or material losses at all, because the radiation time of its fire-control radar was kept to the very minimum. And NATO could cause no HARM to its VHF radar. Zoltan's bunch was forced to stop the radar 23 times - every time they realised that a HARM had been launched at them - but false transmitters near the battery successfully spoofed the anti-radiation missiles.

Enter the AARGM; it is intended precisely to counter these kinds of radar shutdown tactics. Combined with its other advanced capabilities, it would foil all of Col Zoltan's stratagems, and even any new tricks he could have thought of. Its multi-sensor system includes an advanced digital anti-radiation homing (ARH) passive radar receiver and a conformal array antenna to find the target, a GPS / INS system, a millimetre wave (MMW) terminal seeker, and other hi-tech gadgetry. Once the missile finds a target radar in 'on' mode, it immediately pinpoints the target coordinates on GPS, then uses its own millimetre wave radar to precisely locate the target, and destroys it.

AARGM is also advertised as being capable of selectively engaging various targets, not just enemy air defenses. It can also provide near-real-time weapon impact assessments (WIA) to its launch commander. Manufacturer Alliant Techsystems (ATK) expects to begin production in 2008, and actual deployments are scheduled for 2009. AARGM will be installed on all F/A-18 Hornet variants, the EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft, and the Tornado IDS/ECR aircraft. It will also be compatible with the US Navy's EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare aircraft, and F-16s.