Lethality Enhancement by Hi-Therm Reactive Materials

"The Phase I effort produced very important and encouraging results in terms of interceptor lethality enhancement. This was achieved by the innovative development and testing of high density reactive composites which as projectiles or impacting structurescan deliver large amounts of chemical energy to the target in addition to kinetic, in a non-parasitic manner. This effort proved that (a) these materials can be manufactured with sufficient strength to survive the acceleration roads, (b) the chemicalenergy (which can be higher than the kinetic term) couples with target two times more effectively than kinetic, (c) the resulting damage on space metal target is ten times higher than inert steel projectiles of equal mass, density and velocity. The thrustof the proposed Phase II effort is to advance this technology to the next level of development with more complete and realistic testing and materials scale-up, with the ultimate objective utilizing reactive composites as parts of interceptor structure forkill enhancement and the Multiple Miniature Kill Vehicle (MMKV) for more effective discrimination of balloons and other decoys in the presence of re-entry vehicles. Under this effort material properties will be addressed in order to develop reactivecomposites with sufficient strength and high thermal output so that they can receive serious consideration for transition/insertion into scaled-up ground tests and a future flight. A series