AFRL Conducts Successful Tests of Decision-Making Fuze Technology

  • Published
  • By Rex Swenson, AFRL/RWOB
  • Munitions Directorate
EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. --  The drive towards faster, more accurate and capable weapons for defeating hardened and deeply buried targets has created the need for intelligent fuzes capable of active decision making under high-impact conditions. The Robust Intelligent Void and Layer (RIVAL) fuze provides an accurate, "smart" fuzing solution for hard-target defeat. AFRL teamed with Alliant Techsystems to conduct penetration tests demonstrating the RIVAL fuze's capacity to detect, defeat, and survive layered hard targets.

The researchers performed cannon and sled testing of the RIVAL fuze. They subjected the fuzes to a severe high-g shock environment, using AFRL gun testing capabilities to fire subscale projectiles into various concrete targets. The team then tested the RIVAL fuze in a 2000 lb class penetrator, installed on a rocket sled and subsequently fired into a complex, multilayered target. The twofold purpose of these tests was to collect accelerometer data and evaluate fuze survivability and functionality (specifically, inert detonator firing) under the extremely high impulse loads commonly produced during penetration events. 

The RIVAL fuze includes the first domestically designed and built intelligent module that not only senses voids, layers, and distance traveled, but contains its own data recorder for capturing both these decisions and the penetration event itself. The fuze configuration includes three different accelerometers, each mounted at a different location and using a different mounting technique. For the tests, a Media Discrimination Module monitored the first accelerometer, while a Versatile Fuze Recorder (mounted externally, in the booster cup) monitored the second. Monitoring of the third accelerometer occurred via an Electronic Control Module, the mounting scheme of which resembles that of earlier AFRL-designed fuze products.

During testing, all RIVAL fuzes successfully fired their respective inert detonator and recorded deceleration data needed for active fuze decision making. This marks the first time that three different accelerometers, each monitored by an independent recorder, were able to successfully collect penetration data from three different locations within the same fuze. This valuable accelerometer data also provides critically important environmental information, which will aid efforts to design and evaluate future fuze devices. Remarkably, the several fuzes used throughout the multiple tests all survived penetration and remained fully or partially functional afterward. These test results represent another milestone in AFRL's ongoing progress towards optimizing the effectiveness of active decision-making fuze technology.