Site might not be working at the moment, though it was yesterday. Manportable guided minimissile, but why is it armed with an EFP? I was under the impression that EFPs were valuable for long-distance stand-off attacks, because they'll lose very little in their penetration capability, but this is a contact fuzed warhead.

I think it was originally felt that the efp would have greater behind armor effects, and be better for bunkers and hard points.

The last I read, there are now two warheads, one EFP and one Blast/Frag

I may be wrong abotu this particular application, but I thought many A2A missiles have EFP. not the same type, like the sensor fused weapon, where it's a singular projectile. I thought the sidewinder now had a type of EFP - is an annular blast frag NOT considered an EFP?

It's like a series of long rods around the explosive, when it blows up, it forms the rods into a more areodynamic projectile. Is there any way that's what they're talking about?

Hmm, no. I don't recall the word, but it's rather a special type of fragmentation iirc.


An EFP warhead has the advantage of being shorter than a normal shaped charge. That might have been an issue as well.

Sorry to bring up and older thread, but does anybody or site have a picture of the launcher and missile for the Spike in relation to a mans size? Also does anybody have a fielding date for this system? I have heard of the Israeli Spike system, but I know that this is something different.

At about a foot and a half long and 1.57 inches with wings folded and 5.14 inches with wings unfolded, this thing is sweet! I only worry about its explosive content, which in a 4 pound missile is probably not going to be alot. I could see the explosive being about equviant(sp?) to 3-4 30mm rounds or 40mm grenades, not enough to kill a new generation IFV/APC but probably enough to do a mission kill, or if lucky a catastrophic kill on something like a up-armored technical or BRDM-2 model vehicle, not to mention regular things like trucks and cars.

IIRC warhead total weight is one kilogram.

If I recall correctly it was intented for soft targets, not armored vehicles.

As I recall, it was aimed more at the 80% or more of targets that do not require a heavy anti armor warhead.

iirc They talked about light armored vehicles, trucks, machine gun positions, helicopters within limits, things like that.

Sounds like an interesting weapon, may certainly be useful in Iraq and other battlefields. I do wish they would change the name however, I thought the Navy was buying the Israeli Spike for a minute.

Dumb question: why is the Navy developing this, instead of the Army or Marine Corps?


Falken

I think you gents are referrin to a Continous Rod Warhead, like the one fitted to the Standard SA missile of the Navy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous-rod_warhead

I thought that this new weapon system was to be used by both the Army and USMC? What part DOES the Navy have in its development? By the way is there any kind of fielding schedule for this?

They have a weapons lab. They do develop weapons.

IIRC, this is an offshoot of their sidewinder missile program. It's an attempt to provde the Marines with a better rpg than what they were facing from the enemy. It looks like they succeeded. I first read about this on Carlton Meyer's website, g2mil.com, a number of years ago. Carlton is a former Marine officer and a notorious crank. I don't think he even lives in the US anymore. The article has been archived by Carlton and you have to be a menber to read his archives. Whutever that means.

I thought g2mil was part of the Sparkyvian Empire?

Not really, rather a kind of distant periphery.

Isn't the Navy technically in charge of Marine Corp R&D?

The Navy's Crane Labs is the lead designer for all the specops weapons, too. A lot of websites that should have known better read "Spike" and "fire and forget" and ignored everything else in the press releases. THEY confused the Navy and Israeli missles.

I'm just wondering if continuous rod warheads may have other uses than anti-aircraft?
Doesn't the Rafael Matador WB(a disposable launcher with a wall breaching warhead)have something like that?

Not sure how old is the brochure, but here it is:



Edit: Added second part, with the date.

Heh, I imagined it to be a bit um.....smaller? I figured it would be M72 size or smaller. I guess I was wrong.

DTI writes about a different mode. Spike seems now to be designed as a kind of delayed HE.

http://www.zinio.com/express3?issue=301898271
pp.54f