The U.S. Navy next month will take delivery of a new version of the Hellfire II missile, armed with a blast/fragmentation warhead in the place of the shape charge that usually arms the weapon.

The missile, designated AGM-114M, is supposed to allow attack helicopters to destroy ships and buildings, rather than being limited to anti-armor missions. Qualification testing has been undertaken at the U.S. Air Force's Eglin AFB, Florida, and the Naval Air Weapons Center at China Lake, California.

To be qualified for U.S. Navy use, the warhead had to undergo safety tests required to store the weapon on ships. Those include sympathetic detonation, slow cook-off and fast cook-off.
"The warhead is designed to penetrate brick- or steel-plated targets and then explode when commanded by a delay fuse," said Neal Mumbert, Lockheed Martin's Hellfire II technical director. In one test involving a brick wall, the detonation was strong enough to cause the 12-ton concrete barrier to be displaced by a foot.

The missile is guided by the standard, semi-active laser seeker of the Hellfire II.

By Robert Wall