Terminal ballistics of intercept ammunition against mortar targets

The threat imposed by rockets, artillery projectiles, and mortar grenades (RAM) is of major concern for military installations and objects, e.g., in Iraq or Afghanistan. A good portion of these attacks are undertaken with unguided rockets and mortar projectiles with calibers up to 120 mm. This paper concentrates on mortars. A counter RAM system based on 155 mm HE projectiles is applied to intercept and destroy incoming targets at a safe distance of the installation. Therefore, the impact of fragments and a blast wave as warhead mechanisms against a typical Russian mortar projectile with a caliber of 82 mm is investigated by adopting different empirical equations. A response plot overlayed on the fragment map is derived from the detonation and penetration threshold. These results are input parameters for a statistical approach of estimating the ammunition consumption as a function of the multi-shot kill probability.