Aerial targets seek to stress ship defences to their limits

Advances in speed, manoeuvrability, stealth and electronic counter-countermeasures capability exhibited by successive generations of anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs) have driven weapon system engineers to develop increasingly sophisticated air defence guided weapon systems designed to provide either area-wide or point protection to naval combatants. And while high-fidelity simulation environments are increasingly used to support engagement modelling and performance prediction, there comes a point in the development, test and/or training and pre-deployment certification process where the missile and its associated guidance system must prove its performance for real.

At the same time, there is also a need to ensure the proficiency of close-in defences against a new generation of asymmetric air threats, including light aircraft, helicopters and small unmanned air vehicles. Once again, while synthetic trainers clearly have a place, there is no substitute for taking on a live target in a realistic environment.

Accordingly, there remains a requirement for aerial target vehicles that can authentically replicate the kinematic and signature characteristics of generic or specific threat types so as to prove the performance theorised in synthetic environments. In many cases these are complex unmanned air systems in their own right, embodying avionics packages, powerplants and control systems that enable the presentation of representative kinematics, countermeasures and threat profiles so as to fully exercise weapon guidance and lethality effects.

The US Navy (USN) boasts by far the world's largest and most comprehensive inventory of aerial targets, responsibility for which resides with Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) through its Aerial Target and Decoy Systems programme office (PMA-208). As of mid-2009, the inventory consisted of the Northrop Grumman BQM-34S Firebee and BQM-74E Chukar subsonic targets, the legacy AQM-37C supersonic target and the Orbital Sciences GQM-163 Coyote supersonic sea-skimming target (SSST).