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Top-attack

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A top attack weapon is designed to attack armored vehicles from above, to take advantage of the fact that the armour is usually thinnest on the top of an armoured vehicle. The device may be delivered as a smart submunition or a primary munition by an anti-tank guided missile (ATGM), mortar bomb, artillery shell, or even an emplaced munition such as a mine. Top attack munitions use either a shaped charge warhead (often now tandem warheads in order to defeat ERA), or an explosively formed penetrator (EFP) warhead fired while over the target (usually by submunition).

The top attack concept was first put into service by the Swedish Armed Forces in 1988 with the Bofors RBS 56 BILL top-attack anti-tank missile.[1]

Ukrainian army soldiers fire the NLAW in training.

Another method of top attack is the overfly top-attack (OTA or OFTA) where a missile with a vertically oriented shaped charge jet that fires downwards. A missile is directed to overfly the vehicle where a sensor detects the vehicle, and detonates the shape charge down into the top of the vehicle. This is system employed with the NLAW man-portable ATGM.

Weapon systems using top attack

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An Australian Army soldier carrying two FGM-148 Javelins at the Besmaya Range Complex in Iraq, October 2016
An M41 tripod-mounted TOW ITAS-FTL with PADS (a variant of the BGM-71 TOW) of the U.S. Army in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, May 2009
The firing phase of a SMArt 155 submunition. The submunition is held aloft by a parachute, while the submunition seeks a target and fires

Notable weapon systems that utilize top attack include:

Weapon system Type Country of origin
AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground ATGM  United States
AT-1K Raybolt man-portable ATGM  South Korea
BGM-71F/TOW-2B ATGM  United States
Bofors/Nexter Bonus artillery shell submunition  Sweden /

 France

BLU-108 aerial bomb  United States
CBU-97 Sensor Fuzed Weapon aerial Cluster bomb  United States
FGM-148 Javelin man-portable ATGM  United States
Griffin LGB Laser-guided bomb (kit)  Israel
HJ-12 ATGM  China
Kitolov-2M Mortar & Artillery  Russian Federation
KM-8 Gran mortar  Russian Federation
Krasnopol artillery  Soviet Union /

 Russian Federation

KSTAM gun-launched guided projectile  South Korea
LAHAT semi-active laser ATGM  Israel
M93 Hornet mine anti-vehicle wide-area mine  United States
Mokopa air-to-ground anti-tank guided missile  South Africa
MPATGM man-portable ATGM  India
Nag ATGM  India
NLAW overfly top-attack ATGM  Sweden /

 United Kingdom

OMTAS man-portable ATGM  Turkey
PARS 3 LR air-to-ground ATGM  Germany /

 France

RBS 56 BILL / RBS 56B BILL 2 man-portable ATGM  Sweden
SADARM submunition  United States
SMArt 155 artillery shell submunition  Germany
Spike ATGM  Israel
Strix mortar round guided mortar bomb  Sweden
Toophan 3M[i] SACLOS ATGM  Iran
Type 01 LMAT man-portable ATGM  Japan
XM395 Precision Guided Mortar Munition guided mortar bomb  United States
  1. ^ The Toophan is a reverse engineered clone of the BGM-71 TOW

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "RBS 56 BILL". robotmuseum.se (in Swedish). Retrieved February 26, 2022.