BROACH multiple warhead system

June 14th, 1999

British Aerospace and its partners working with US prime contractors Boeing and Raytheon have demonstrated the ability of the BROACH warhead to penetrate heavily hardened targets using subsonic stand-off missiles. This capability is new to the US and its NATO allies, as today's forces rely on direct overflight and delivery of Kinetic Energy penetrator bombs such as the GBU-28 or BLU-109 with JDAMs kits.

BROACH technology is innovative in that rather than simply using mass and speed to penetrate targets, as with conventional warheads, approximately 1/3 of the mass of the warhead is used for a large shaped charge. This "Augmenting Charge" detonates first, cleaving the target with a high speed plasma jet. A "Follow Through Bomb" then penetrates and detonates inside the target structure.

Tests in Raytheon's Joint Stand Off Weapon (JSOW) Unitary airframe added to earlier work showing penetration at highly oblique impact angles and proved that the system was well-engineered, robust against a spread of targets and ready for integration. They included Insensitive Munitions proving and blast / fragmentation characterization. The tests were highly successful and resulted in a letter of commendation from the USN's Strike Weapons Program Manager. Raytheon, under contract to the Navy has since selected BROACH as it's pre-planned product improvement (P31) warhead for JSOW.

Tests in Boeing's Conventional Air Launched Cruise Missile (CALCM) airframe demonstrated performance against 3.7m thick concrete or rock targets at the UK test range in Pendine, Wales, May 98 and against targets overlaid with large quantities of earth at Eglin AFB in Florida, December '98.

BROACH is innovative not just in its technology, but also in the way it successfully pulls together government and industry organisations on both sides of the Atlantic. The critical technology base in the UK includes the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) which brings strong modelling, analysis and test skills to the team. In the US, Team-BROACH operates in Integrated Product Teams (IPTs) with its US primes. Overall transition of data from the Royal Air Force Storm Shadow stand-off missile programme into the US programmes is accomplished through a government to government MOU between the two countries and officials from MoD and DoD exercise close programme oversight.

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