FGM-148 Javelin: Saint Javelin, the Soft Launch and the Top-Attack Dive

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The FGM-148 Javelin, the launcher cradled by the viral Saint Javelin icon of the Russo-Ukrainian War, replaced the wire-guided M47 Dragon, which forced its gunner to stay exposed while steering the missile to the target. The Javelin is fire and forget. A small launch motor pushes the missile out of the tube and burns out before it clears the end, and the flight motor ignites only once it is a safe distance away, a soft launch that avoids a deadly back blast in enclosed spaces. Shear pins let a jammed motor blow out the rear instead of exploding, and because the launch propellant contains lead beta-resorcylate, gunners hold their breath when firing. The reusable Command Launch Unit doubles as a thermal sight, and its lightweight successor is 70 percent smaller and 40 percent lighter.

The missile's MerCad infrared seeker is cooled to minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit by a Joule-Thomson cooler before launch and an onboard argon bottle during its roughly 19-second flight, and it tracks the target's shape frame by frame. In top-attack mode it climbs to 150 meters and dives onto a tank's thin roof, where a tandem warhead's molybdenum-lined precursor sets off explosive reactive armor before the copper main charge forms a hypervelocity metal jet. Fielded in 1996, the Javelin debuted in Iraq in 2003 at the Battle of Debecka Pass and was used in Afghanistan against machine gun nests in caves and mountainsides more than 2,500 meters away. In Ukraine, the Pentagon reported 100 hits from the first 112 fired; reports said Russia traded captured Javelins to Iran for Shahed drones, and U.S. stockpiles fell by close to a third.

• A single Javelin missile costs over $200,000, a price weighed against airstrikes and the risk to soldiers.
• Gunners train for two weeks at Fort Moore memorizing enemy vehicle silhouettes and running timed drills.
• Direct attack mode flies a flatter path for targets under cover, such as bunkers, and for low-flying helicopters.
• Lockheed Martin and Raytheon moved to quadruple output from about 1,000 to 4,000 a year, and the F model adds a fragmenting multipurpose warhead.
• Norway is looking to replace its Javelins as tanks adopt active protection systems that shoot down incoming missiles.