F/A-18C Hornet launches Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile to test
Alliant Techsystems, the U.S. Navy, and the Italian Air Force announced today that the company’s Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile (AARGM) has successfully completed another challenging missile firing at the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station on Feb. 21. This test was a critical milestone in the program and keeps it on track for low-rate initial production (LRIP).
The missile was launched off-axis and at low altitude from the wing of an F/A-18C Hornet. The operationally realistic launch profile posed a significant challenge to the missile as its sensor did not have direct line-of-sight to the target. After launch, the missile successfully detected, identified, located, and guided to a representative enemy air defense radar installation, scoring a direct hit.
ATK conducted the test in partnership with the U.S. Navy’s Integrated Test Team, led by the Direct and Time Sensitive Strike Program Office (PMA-242). The team also includes members from the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division — China Lake, the Naval Air Systems Command — Patuxent River, and the Italian Air Force.
The test firing is a culmination of a successful series of laboratory integration and captive flights. It demonstrated the maturity of the AARGM integration with the F/A-18 aircraft and the continued progress of fielding a long-range, precision strike capability against a wide array of time critical targets. The missile utilized GPS/INS navigation with enroute transition to anti-radiation homing (ARH) guidance on the air defense radar target. The test demonstrated how AARGM’s digital ARH receiver can detect, identify, track, geographically locate, and guide to lethal range on the target.
ARGM is a supersonic, air-launched tactical missile that will be integrated on the F/A-18 C/D, F/A-18 E/F, EA-18G and Tornado IDS/ECR aircraft. The missile is also being designed to be compatible with the F-35, EA-6B and U.S. and Allied F-16 aircraft. Its advanced multi-sensor
system, including a Millimeter Wave (MMW) terminal seeker, advanced digital Anti-Radiation Homing (ARH) receiver and a GPS/INS, is capable of rapidly engaging traditional and advanced enemy air defense targets as well as non-radar time-sensitive strike targets. The AARGM MMW seeker can operate in concert with the ARH to counter RF shutdown tactics, or in a stand-alone mode to guide to non-emitting time sensitive targets. AARGM is a network-enabled weapon that directly receives tactical intelligence information via an embedded data link and transmits real-time Weapon Impact Assessment (WIA) reports. AARGM, the successor to the U.S. Navy AGM-88 HARM system, is a U.S. and Italian international cooperative major acquisition program with the U.S. Navy as the executive agent.