O-097 New and Evolving IM Threats

The world has significantly changed over the last 20 years. The NATO Nations operational concepts have evolved since the end of the Cold War from its East/West opposition in Central Europe to the current Force Projection concepts. Rapid deployments of allied forces overseas with the associated logistics are facing more and more terrorist attacks, especially with RPGs and IEDs. As most current standard IM threats were defined more than 20 years ago, it is now time to re-assess the IM threats to assure the armed forces that the current standardized threats and their associated stimuli are still relevant in the evolving international environment.

Three questions need to be answered to achieve this goal:

• What are the new or evolving weapon systems technologies?
• Are these technologies widely available?
• Are the current IM stimuli covering the stimuli derived from the new threats?

In this paper, an introduction is given on the improvement of the existing weapon systems and the new weapon systems, which may influence deliberate attack threats on munitions. A specific focus will be made on:

• Thermobaric warheads;
• Directed Energy threats (aimable, EFP, HPM and RF warheads);
• Evolving mechanical threats (e.g., bullets);
• Terrorist attacks (massive explosion, IEDs, etc.)

In each case, the availability of the specific technologies is presented and a summary is provided on the assessment of the need for new IM stimuli requirements. Finally, recommendations on the way forward are proposed.