An analysis on the survivability of Land Attack Missiles (LAM)

Abstract

This thesis develops a process to assist military planners in assessing and evaluating the effectiveness of land attack missiles. The aforementioned process contains the means to address the variety of important issues and concerns that are associated with the employment of such land attack missile systems. The Department of the Navy is proposing a new land attack missile that will be employed by the Destroyer of the 21st Century (DD 21) to assist in performing Naval Surface Fire Support missions for Marines and Army troops operating ashore. This research focuses on using the Extended Air Defense Simulation (EADSIM) to estimate the probability of LAM survival for different variants of land attack missiles against various threats. The analysis concludes that the most survivable cruise missile variants have an altitude of at least 4, 000 meters, speed of at least 1,610 knots, and stealthy enough to limit the enemy air defense site detection range to 1% of its maximum range. Survivable ballistic missile variants have a lofted trajectory, speed in the 2,577 knot range, and stealthy enough to limit the enemy air defense site detection range to 10% of its maximum range. The data in this thesis is from unclassified sources, but the process can be applied with classified numerical parameters