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home > November/December, 2007 issue > article
Supercomputer powers DOD’s Hellfire upgrade
By John E. West
Special to Defense Systems
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan forced a new challenge on the U.S. military: designing a weapon to strike an enemy hiding in caves, bunkers and fortified buildings. And the need was immediate — there was no time to wait three years to retrofit an existing weapon.
To accomplish that mission goal, the Defense Department turned to the Hellfire missile system by developing a new thermobaric variant, designated the AGM-114N. Supercomputer simulations performed in the DOD High Performance Computing Modernization Program helped the AGM-114N to be developed in 13 months — with fewer live tests needed and higher operational confidence — at a savings of tens of millions of dollars in development and deployment costs.
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency coordinated with the Army and Navy to develop a new warhead specifically designed to enhance blast performance in enclosed environments, and the primary design parameter was a mix of explosives.
DOD’s supercomputers helped predict which mixture would provide the highest battlefield performance while balancing the structural stress on the inside of the missile during penetration to avoid a premature explosion. Gaining an early understanding of how the missile behaved in these situations allowed the team to cut nearly two years from the traditional development schedule.
The lethality of the AGM-114N is better than its predecessor, the 114K, on the same target set. Roughly three 114K missiles are required to get the same destructive probability in an urban environment that a single 114N can cause.
DOD said that efficiency saves costs on missiles and deployment, and because fewer missiles are necessary for a target, warfighters have shorter exposure times.
This type of payoff is an attraction of supercomputing for DOD. Although they require a significant investment in infrastructure and expertise, supercomputers enable DOD to solve problems more quickly than would otherwise be possible. DOD now uses supercomputing in diverse applications, such as the simulation of military tactics, development and acquisition of new weapons systems, and cleaning of military installations.
The HPCMP is responsible for deploying the hardware, software, networks and expertise that provide some of the world’s most advanced computing capability that supports DOD’s mission. The program has six large supercomputing centers and supplies expertise and resources at numerous other military sites nationwide.
West is a senior fellow at the Defense Department High Performance Computing Modernization Program. He is based at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Miss.
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