THE LITTLE MISSILE THAT COULD

What good is a minuscule missile without a warhead? Plenty, according to the
Missile Systems Group of Hughes Aircraft in Canoga Park, California.
Researchers there have developed a miniature missile, slightly larger than a
coffee can, that uses kinetic energy instead of an explosive warhead to destroy
its target.

The 12-pound rocket, called LEAP for Lightweight Exo-Atmospheric Projectile,
uses eight tiny rear-mounted thrusters to control its movements in space. The
thrusters expel high-speed bursts of warmed hydrazine gas. steering the
projectile under the direction of an onboard computer that distributes the gas
to the appropriate thrusters. In tests last summer at Edwards Air Force Base,
the thrusters, less than an inch long and weighing barely three grams each,
fired more than 1,200 times in the seven-second test, each one generating a
pound of thrust in pulses of power that lasted just one-thousandth of a second.
They kept LEAP oriented ten feet above the ground while an infrared optical
scanner and the onboard computer successfully tracked a simulated target.

Able to be launched either from the ground or from orbit, the missile is a
byproduct of research for the Star Wars defense system. "This is not a
mission-oriented project; it's a demonstration of technical capability," says
Hughes spokesman H. D. Watkins.

More tests will be run this year at the White Sands, New Mexico, missile range.
The missile's developers still must prove that a collision between a well-aimed
LEAP moving at five to seven kilometers per second and an incoming rocket going
slightly faster would produce enough kinetic energy to destroy the attacker
without explosives.