ATACMS
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ATACMS

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ATACMS

The MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS /əˈtækəmz/) is a short-range supersonic tactical ballistic missile designed and manufactured by the American defense company Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV), and later, through acquisitions, Lockheed Martin. The missile uses solid propellant and is 13 feet (4.0 m) long and 24 inches (610 mm) in diameter, and the longest-range variants can fly up to 190 miles (300 km). It can be fired from the tracked M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) and the wheeled M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). An ATACMS launch container (pod) has one rocket but a lid patterned with six circles like a standard MLRS rocket lid to prevent an enemy from discerning what type of missile is loaded.

The concept of a conventional tactical ballistic missile was made possible by the doctrinal shift of the late Cold War, which rejected the indispensability of an early nuclear strike on the Warsaw Pact forces in the event the Cold War went hot. The AirLand Battle and Follow-on Forces Attack doctrines, which emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s, necessitated a conventional-armed (hence much more accurate) missile to strike enemy reserves, so the United States Army Aviation and Missile Command sponsored the Simplified Inertial Guidance Demonstrator (SIG-D) program.

Within this program, Ling-Temco-Vought developed a solid-fuel analog of the MGM-52 Lance missile, designated T-22, with a new RLG-based inertial guidance package, which demonstrated unprecedented accuracy. In 1978, DARPA started the Assault Breaker technology demonstration program to attack armor formations with many mobile hard targets at standoff ranges. It used the T-22 missile and the Patriot-based Martin Marietta T-16 missile with cluster warheads.

In March 1980 the U.S. Army decided to replace the Lance with a similar nuclear, but also chemical or biological, tipped solid-fuel missile with simplified usability dubbed the Corps Support Weapon System (CSWS). In a year, concerned about the fact Army started to develop the weapon with a similar objectives to interdict the second-echelon massed targets to already developing by USAF's Conventional Standoff Weapon (CSW) program with only difference of surface/air-launched and both positioned as the part of same Short Range Nuclear Forces of Non-Strategic Nuclear Force Program, the Department of Defense subdued CSWS Project Office (Provisional) to MICOM renaming it to the System Development Office. That new office acquired the Assault Breaker effort thus started to manage the Assault Breaker and CSWS efforts together, that way slowly summing up and moving forward the weapon development progress for the JTACMS program to be сreated.

Development of the missile now known as ATACMS started in 1980, when the U.S. Army decided to replace the Lance with a similar nuclear, but also chemical or biological, tipped solid-fuel missile dubbed the Corps Support Weapon System (CSWS). Concerned that two branches were developing too many similar missiles with different warheads, the Department of Defense merged the program with DARPA's Assault Breaker in 1981, and with United States Air Force (USAF)'s Conventional Standoff Weapon (CSW) in 1982–1983.

The new missile system, designated Joint Tactical Missile System (JTACMS), soon encountered USAF resistance to the idea of an air-launched ballistic missile. As a result, in 1984 the USAF ended its participation in the non-cruise missile portion of the program, leading to the missile being redesignated as the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS).

In fiscal year 1982, the United States House Committee on Appropriations approved the Corps Support Weapon System (CSWS) program, which was the successor to the US Army Assault Breaker program in cooperation with DARPA, was merged with the Conventional Standoff Weapon (CSW) US Air Force and renamed the Joint Tactical Missile System (JTACMS), the goal of which was to create a weapon that meets the combined requirements of both programs, namely, that it can attack and destroy the second-echelon of enemy forces, in particular armored vehicles, and scatter submunitions against such vehicles. In this project, it was planned to use the technologies of Assault Breaker to develop a surface-to-surface weapon system, which should be used for the so-called "deep interdiction" (some sort of preventive measure, the prototype of which is air interdiction used by air force) – by which is meant the destruction or causing significant damage by the joint activity of air and ground forces to the specific distant from the front line targets, such as buildings, bridges, oil refineries and other industry, that way slowing down logistics and/or providing and/or supporting and, therefore, advancing enemy troops with the aim of tactical, even albeit short-term, superiority of allied troops, which can significantly affect the military theater in a positive way, – using conventional or nuclear weapons on the battlefield. Although both services were to participate in the development of the weapon, it was the US Army who led the JTACMS program.

The program was initially led by Colonel James B. Lincoln, who was a full-time and continuous student at numerous military schools (from 1960, when he graduated from the United States Military Academy, until 1980, when he graduated from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces), in 1977 on the basis of Defense Systems Management College graduated with a thesis of "Managing Total Acquisition Time: A New Priority for Major Weapon Systems", where, in particular, he focused on the significant decrease in the pace of procurement of the main missile complexes compared to 1971 and in 1980, heading the TRADOC program at Fort Sill in the direction of MLRS, spoke rather defiantly about field army systems, where, in particular, he compared the struggle of the US Army for limited resources during the development of new systems with bow wave, which prevents the ship from accelerating, and military projects are either canceled or refinanced by the state, with waves diverging from it, and was noticed by DARCOM. In April 1984, he was transferred to be the head of the TOW project, and in the current project he was replaced by Colonel William J. Fiorentino, who by that time had already been the head of the Pershing Project Manager's Office for more than 5 years, which during his leadership developed two-stage solid fuel mobile-launched ballistic missiles with a nuclear warhead both short (Pershing) and medium (Pershing II) ranged. Dr. Billy Tidwell who was program manager during JTACMS while and Acting Program Manager for a short period.

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