ATALAR for Cruise-Missile Defense Sensor-Grid

1. Introduction (scope):

1.1 Since summer 2024 it has become patently clear that even subsonic cruise missiles developed decades ago, like Taurus (aka Storm-Shadow, Scalp), JASSM, and Russian models hitting Ukraine, and subsonic cruise ASMs (Anti-Ship Missiles), are a tremendous threat - sofar unstoppable - across fronts and deep into the populated land behind.

This is in contrast to the fact that NATO is based on maritime supremacy, thus relying on its ships and islands (e.g. Hawaii, Diego-Garcia, Guam) for affecting other continents and for protecting its own homeland territories, mostly in North-America.

Subscribe to our newsletter

1.2 Propeller-driven UAVs aren’t an existential threat: e.g. Geranium are detected and shot by Vulcan-Phalanx and Gepard, yet Gepard’s are scarce on the land-battlefield, while UAVs have not caused much damage to navies, rather to civilian shipping. Lines of shooters are also effective against low-flying ‘sneaking’ such UAVs.

1.3 The results are humongous losses to infrastructure and selective choking of the southern red sea shipping to the West. These are strategic, burning, international security problems.

2. Doctrine (Domain Theory):

2.1 In order to neutralize a target it must first be detected, then tracked, then fired at until it is destroyed (“killed”)..

2.2 An interceptor missile must be launched well in advance of interception in order to lock on it, home (line of sight) on it and kill it, performing a hard-kill due to the very high-speeds concerned.

This is designed by Dr. Mordechai Shefer’s (who designed the Python 3 & 4 interceptor missiles) in his Pa’amon series of anti-ballistic missiles for various ranges and altitudes.

3. Causes (Problem):

3.1 The main problem is detecting these missiles in flight, because of their very-low-RCS (Radar Cross Section) aka 'stealthy' nature. When viewed from the ground or sea-level (e.g. a ship), an incoming missile has the cross section of only about a small A4 paper page, and it is sharply sloped for minimal drag in its high-speed flight – which is also very effective in deflecting radio (radar) waves, therefore they don’t reflect back to their sending dish – i.e.: are not detected.

3.2 Except for the north-pole and the oceans/seas, the surface of land (the terrain) is 3-dimensional with many obscurations. Thus detecting cruise missiles by means of land-based equipment is very difficult, and even at sea from long ranges it is difficult due to the known water surface curvature .

3.3 ISR Crisis

The existing Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) complex is unfit for the needed detection purpose: High-altitude observers are few, scarce and the majority are designed either to track small targets with accurate focus, or to map terrain with granularity of several meters a pixel, which is insufficient for detecting cruise missiles.

This gap has just been admitted and prioritized by the US, yet cost-effective solutions still have to be found ( https://breakingdefense.com/2025/02/sensing-grid-should-be-top-priority-for-us-iron-dome-northcom-head/ ).

3.4 Cyber security is a major susceptibility in controlling satellites (required for overcoming terrain obscurations). For continuous high-resolution thus broad-band video streaming, given the known characteristics of the observed terrain (clear-text), key-management may pose a challenge. Example : the US DoD Iridium’s text-only messages have just been hacked ( https://spectrum.ieee.org/iridium-satellite )

4. Remedies (Mitigations):

4.1 Dr. Shefer presented already in 2009 [*] how to deploy a sensor network of optical satellites, to cover all the terrestrial and maritime regions through which cruise missiles may arrive to strike. This requires very good day and night optics, massive real-time processing of high quantities of real-time data, accordingly energy-consuming, thus satellites of significant size, weight, and cost are required. Thus might by unaffordable under certain circumstances (cost, telecoms, malfunc- tions).

4.2 This document proposes to launch High-Altitude Long-Endurance (HALE) UAVs from multiple small ships (e.g. frigates) around North America, Europe, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, that by means of ATALAR (Arm-Tip Automated Launch And Recovery for UAVs ) suitable for up to sea-state 6.

4.3 ATALAR (part of the LAR-DH process) represents a paradigm-shift for recovering to ships of larger UAVs, thus can achieve the above operational flexibility in deployment of optical observers from above with streaming video down link. This is accomplished thanks to its unique advantages:

4.3.1 Accommodation of Large wingspans (example: 18 meters found in the French Patroller UAV), enabling full-day of flight time per mission.

4.3.2 Accommodating higher UAV weight, example 1 or 2 metric tons, enabling carrying top-quality payloads and over-the-horizon long-range communications with their ship to send detections and video.

4.3.3 It does not require any open flight-deck, not even a helipad, thus fitting many existing ship types.

4.3.4 It does not give away the ship’s location (like a tethered UAV might) ;

4.3.5 Unlike into-net-landing, it doesn’t risk the propeller.

4.3.6 A single arm is used for both Launch and Recovery.

4.3.7 Feasibility of the cable-assisted UAV recovery concept has been accepted by both the US and Israeli authorities.

4.3.8 Reduces crew’s work load, thus robust and scalable.

4.3.9 Uses the simple principles of Paragliding, like in water-sports.

4.3.10 Successfully field-trialed at garage-project level, then repeated in the US in actual UAV vs. small ship test series – no single crash.

4.3.11 Patented world-wide.

5. Conclusion:

Given the present burning strategic defense gaps of the West, focused on defense against cruise missiles on land and at sea, there seems to be no better way then to equip most NATO frigates with ATALAR arms to launch and recover Endurance UAVs for operating the sensors-grid solution, and then with vertical launch tubes (compact, commonplace) for the defending missiles [2.2]

For more details, visit the Website of the inventor and developer of the LAR-DH method (aka ATALAR’s integration), Aeronautical Engineer Meir Yoffe : https://uav-recovery.vercel.app/