Shoot and scoot

The Javelin is a medium-range, man-portable, shoulder-launched, fire-and-forget anti-tank weapon. It can be mounted on vehicles, aircraft and watercraft. The system can destroy tanks and other platforms, whether shielded by conventional steel and composite plating or by reactive armour, the explosive panels fixed to a vehicle’s exterior that blow outwards to blunt an incoming warhead. It has a secondary capability against bunkers too. It has a maximum range in excess of 4,500 metres. What fire-and-forget means in practice is that the missile flies itself. The DoD describes it as autonomously guided by an imaging infrared seeker working with adaptive correlation tracking algorithms — software that holds the lock on a moving target  — while an onboard flight computer carries it to the target the gunner selected before launch.

The army currently uses the 84 millimetre multi-role recoilless rifle, “which is particularly suited for use at the platoon level”, and second-generation missiles, says Lieutenant General Dushyant Singh (retired), Director General of the Centre for Land Warfare Studies. “But the Javelin brings with it a host of new capabilities. On a battlefield where drones can ambush infantry, fire-and-forget allows the gunner to scoot after shooting. He is less exposed and more mobile. This enables force preservation, which is a primary concern at present.”

“The missile’s seeker and software bring increased precision, making the probability of hitting the target higher,” he says. “In essence, it will increase both the lethality and the survivability of the soldier.”

The most valuable component of the system is the software that keeps it tracking after the gunner has moved or turned to another target. That is where the “secret” classification comes in. “The sensitivity is primarily in the software programmes which instruct the system how to operate in the presence of countermeasures,” the DoD says. The hardware is sensitive too, specifically what it would reveal about the infrared wavelengths the seeker uses.

The system is capable of “soft launch from enclosures or covered fighting positions”. This means that when it is fired from inside a room or a bunker, the crew is not harmed by a backblast.

The missile can be flown in “top attack and direct fire modes” — flight profiles the gunner selects between. Direct fire is meant for targets under cover. Top attack sends the missile climbing and then down onto the roof of the target.