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Good thread. I think a write up on the development of the 4th gen fighters would good only in that the changing threats combined with the politics of the post-Vietnam era military shuffle. Also development of aim-9x vis a vis the f-22 is also interesting stuff.
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Dec 21, 2010 05:19
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On the topic of air and missile defense systems. There's a programmer who has been building SAM simulators for SA-2,SA-4, and SA-4 air defense systems. http://sites.google.com/site/samsimulator1972/ What I like most about the software is it shows how difficult and complicated these systems really are and as such how important training was in the use of these systems.
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Dec 27, 2010 21:31
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iyaayas01 posted:Do you see that USAF?? Do you see?? THAT is what you should be buying in the interim/instead of JSFs. At the very least pull a Navy (they did this with Super Hornets) and buy some to a) keep the production line open b) provide replacement for the REALLY old aircraft in your fleet (legacy -C/-D Hornets in the case of the Navy, Block 30/32 and 40/42 Vipers in the case of the USAF). Even if you do endup with JSFs you've got some pretty sweet fighters on the cheap, and let's be honest, there's a lot we need tacair to be able to do that doesn't require stealth. If the JSF program goes completely off the rails, you have a viable option B for your tacair replacement needs instead of being forced to choose between an overbudget underperforming domestic program on the one hand (looking at you fatty) and an outstanding underbudget overperforming foreign program on the other (Gripen is the best deal on the international fighter market, bar none). Then again perhaps their assuming what industry has been talking about for years, that there will inevitably be a reduction in combat wings in the next 10 years, reducing both the fighter and budget gap. daskrolator fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Mar 1, 2011 |
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Mar 1, 2011 23:12
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iyaayas01 posted:Yeah, that's the really frustrating part. I get SLEPing the limited number of F-15Cs to the "Golden Eagle" standard, because there isn't really a ready supplement out there (F-22s don't play and the Silent Eagle concept, while cool, is really more to fill the Strike Eagle role, not the strictly air to air role the Charlie fills). But spending oodles of money to SLEP the Vipers when you could spend just a bit more (or maybe even the same amount depending on how much the SLEP ends up costing) to purchase vastly upgraded NEW MANUFACTURE aircraft of the EXACT SAME TYPE just blows my mind.
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Mar 2, 2011 01:50
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iyaayas01 posted:
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Mar 3, 2011 17:35
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You mean the project that until recently was called the "2018 bomber" and is now (notionally) projected for the mid '20s (and which we'll probably get around 2035)?
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iyaayas01 posted:You mean the unmanned manned nuclear capable non-nuclear bomber that will be F-111 sized but maybe actually be closer to the B-2 and will be 100% strike but will also have ISR capabilities? Nah, the requirements are all hammered out with that one. I heard Major general David Scott, who establishes policy for operational capabilities-based requirements for USAF, speak last week about it. He didnt say much. He talked about it being optionally manned, a ballpark # of a/c, and it being a "system of systems." Oh and he wants it ALCM capable, and affordable. Let the shaping begin.
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Mar 4, 2011 20:34
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Helter Skelter posted:Know what owns? B1-B Lancers, that's what. Could we get some talk about B-1Bs and their use of sonic dash in Afghanistan?
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Apr 21, 2011 15:20
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mlmp08 posted:Ok, they're no USA or Russia, but they have reasonable and numerous air defense systems. Here's a write up on Pakistan's air defense systems, they are poo poo. http://geimint.blogspot.com/2007/07/modernizing-pakistani-air-defenses.html
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May 6, 2011 13:04
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mlmp08 posted:Meh, their biggest problems are with long-range SAMs designed primarily for FW threats. They have quite a bit of ok short-range SAMs that can pose serious problems for helicopters, which is what we were discussing. “Now no helicopter will be able to escape after entering into Pakistani territory,” the official [Pakistani] sources said. http://arabnews.com/world/article154005.ece
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May 6, 2011 17:20
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Smiling Jack posted:Dont MANPADS have a major drawback in regards to target aquisition and identification in that you're basically depending on the operator to not fire on friendly helicopters? Yes but that's also a problem with most missiles. If my memory serves me when India was invited to Red Flag half of their losses were due to friendly fire, their command and control has a ways to go. Friend or foe identification is still a huge issue as well.
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May 6, 2011 19:23
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dogmaan posted:Apparently the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet got knocked out of the MMRCA due to poor maneuverability. While the F/A-18 is the least maneuverable of the serious MMRCA contenders, the F/A-18 got kicked out because of tech transfer issues, much like Brazil's contention with the F/A-18 during the F-X2. State department has been dragging its feet on export reform for years now and puts US international sales at a disadvantage.
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Jun 4, 2011 14:33
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Craptacular posted:Any particular reasons why we shouldn't just cancel the F35 and build more F22s? Restarting the supply chain and production line will take time and cost a few billion dollars. RAND did a study on it a few years ago that goes into much greater detail. http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR831.html I've said JSF stuff in the past when I really shouldn't, but I will say that historically both the USAF and the Navy have made sacrificed more capable (either curtailing orders or outright canceling) for lower cost ones when budgets get tight. F/A-18A-Ds over F-14s, F-16s over F-15s, F/A-18EFs over the A-12. Hell, look at how F-15s and F-14s were born out of the F-111's failing so miserably.
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Jun 7, 2011 14:50
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To answer SIGSEGV's question of aircraft other than fixed-wing fighter aircraft there's quite a few down the pipe, but many of it is essentially derivative aircraft or more capable unmanned. USAF's KC-46A is by far the largest in terms of budget allocation, but is essentially a commercial derivative aircraft with most of the non-recurring budget going into software. USAF's C-130AMP will re-capitalize and streamline the avionics packages on most c-130s, no need for a c-130 replacement. Full rate production will happen, just a matter of whether it will be Boeing or someone else. US Navy's P-8 is a P-3 replacement using a commercial derivative aircraft in a ASW/ASuW role. USAF's JSTARs re-engine may turn into a whole new program since an analysis of alternatives is being conducted as the P-8 as a viable replacement. Rivet Joint may see the same for that matter. Army/USMC's cargo UAS will be an unmanned rotorcraft providing the ability to deliver cargo in austere areas. USMC's STUAS is an unmanned isr/strike platform providing a tier 2 unmanned capability. C-27 buy won't happen in big numbers, we have all the tactical lift we need and even more so when they move from 2 to 1 major combat operations. On the strike side, UCLASS (the unmanned carrier based strike aircraft), Next gen bomber, and next gen air dominance (F/A-18EF replacement) are all in the pipeline in the 10-15 year time frame. CAS aircraft in any significant numbers won't happen, we're pulling out, party is over. Really with the exception of the old tanker fleet as well as some of the manned ISR fleet, there's no need to have new programs of record, and even then there's no need for any new cutting edge platform development. There really is no need for anything fancy. The trend now and for the next few years will be platforms that meet the requirements and have life cycle costs that are understood by the services.
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Jul 1, 2011 03:40
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iyaayas01 posted:Significant numbers, no, but there are a few light attack programs out there...AFSOC has been toying with a manned light attack aircraft, either an AT-6B or a Super Tucano, while Naval Special Warfare has already picked up a few armed Super Tucanos for use with the Imminent Fury program. But yeah, no need to have a shitload of CAS specific aircraft that are useless against anyone with half an air defense system if you are pretty much done fighting insurgencies against some dudes in a cave....which like it or not, the political/fiscal reality is that the US is pretty much done fighting that type of conflict in a large scale (SOF/CIA type dudes is another story entirely). I agree in that the SOF budgets will continue to grow because the fact of the matter is they are still immensely small budgets compared to the services. They could triple their budget and it would essentially a rounding error. More generally I think the services are finally coming to terms with the fact that with the exception of a small list of missions, the current generation of platforms is suitable for the tasks in the future. We don't need next gen lift (although joint future theater lift gets talked about every few years), we don't need next gen rotorcraft, and we really don't need next gen surface fleet. C-130s and Chinooks, their production lines were started in the 50s and 60s respectively, both saw combat in the Vietnam war, and have new orders for years to come. Their operating and maintenance costs are understood not just by the DoD but also by dozens of international customers. With the exception of incremental fuel efficiency improvements and upgrades to avionics packages, there's no need to procure a next generation of platforms. They are the Browning M2s of their respective markets. This is not to say that our current platforms don't need replacing, the age and use of these platforms have to be re-capitalized, it's just blasphemy to say that we should replace them with current generation equivalents.
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Jul 1, 2011 15:03
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iyaayas01 posted:They finally decided to deploy the MX in a rail basing scheme for survivability purposes, where they would hide in plain sight among the nation's rail system, but this was never implemented because the Cold War ended.
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Jul 26, 2011 15:32
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Speaking of the nuclear triad, rumors are about that under the most austere budget cuts the nuclear triad may go to a diad. Which leg gets eliminated? Land-based ICBMs, nuclear bombers, or da boomers?
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Aug 23, 2011 12:51
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If the nuclear triad is cut to a diad in the name of austerity, which of the three systems is the most costly relative the capabilities they provide? When adding in cost of O&M, military personnel, basing, and procurement/RDT&E, within a rough order of magnitude how expensive are each?
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Aug 23, 2011 19:45
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Cyrano4747 posted:I'm not 100% on this, but I'm pretty sure that as far as today's arsenals go the same bombers which are capable of deploying nuclear weapons are the exact same ones that currently deploy our conventional munitions. I'm sure iyaayas01 will chime in on this but there is a portion of our B-52 fleet which deploy conventional munitions that do not have the capability to deploy nuclear weapons. This was the result of the last few arms reduction treaties. The real issue with nuclear bombers is to what extend do you continue to modernize the B-52 fleet, sustain the B-1B and B-2 fleets, and capitalize for a potentially nuclear capable family of long range strike systems (formerly next gen bomber). EDIT: I actually didn't know B-1Bs were not nuclear capable, color me surprised.
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Aug 24, 2011 03:48
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The sad truth is killng individual platforms or new development/production programs is not going satiate the defense downturn and neither will efficiency initiatives, acquisition, reform, or even military entitlement reform. In the end it will be the outright elimination of brigade combat teams, fighter air wing equivalents, carrier strike groups, and expeditionary strike groups. It won't be as nuanced in the FY13 budget since DoD is planning to a ~$350B over 10 years reduction compared to the FY12 budget, but if the debt trigger occurs they'll have to cut upto $1T over 10 years. $1T in cuts will roughly translate into a 20% reduction in baseline budget and it will be a huge deal.
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Aug 24, 2011 12:58
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McNally posted:So I'm taking my undergraduate history seminar this semester and I'm gonna need to write a 25 page research paper on the Cold War. I'm thinking nuclear deterrence. I don't suppose any of you guys have any knowledge about that and can point me to some decent sources, do you? Read Strategies of Containment by John Lewis Gaddis. Covers so many cold war topics its crazy.
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Aug 24, 2011 15:00
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Oxford Comma posted:I wish someone would make a thread similar to this, but about ground units and/or small-scale tactics, as opposed to global strategy. Speaking of small scale tactics, check out this article about israel during the 2nd intifada. It's about re-intepretating the battlespace in urban combat, namely not looking at alleys, doorways and windows as paths of maneuver but instead constraints to maneuver. Or to put it another way viewing conventional urban constraints such as walls, gates, ceilings as a means of maneuvering by blowing holes through them. http://www.scribd.com/doc/57693125/Eyal-Weizman-Lethal-Theory#open_download Also speaking of this topic, I know a while back there was a thread talking about military books, what ever happen to that thread. Personally I'd love to get an idea of what the "best" books are from a history and strategy perspective in these subjects: Electronic Warfare from 1945 to present Comparative tactics between the US and soviet armies at the platoon, company, battalion level Comparative naval strategies between US and soviet navies History of CIA and KGB through the lens of policy on a case by case basis
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Aug 24, 2011 20:27
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Saint Celestine posted:There would also be considerable cost savings if we cut down our ICBM fleet and modernized it. Technology wise, there's nothing stopping us from designing a model with more warheads per missile, that way we could cut down on the number of missiles, while actually gaining # of warheads deployed. I think the Minuteman only carries 3 MIRVs per missile, while other missiles (SS-18) could carry 10. Bump up the MIRVs carried to 10 or 12, and with 200 missiles, you could have 2000 warheads, while with 450 missiles and 3 MIRVs, you only have 1350. The thing the existing land based ICBM fleet doesn't really cost that much money relative to the rest of the DoD budget, including personnel, military construction, and operations and maintenance(O&M), it's barely a billion dollars annually. Even if you were to include the next round of sustainment upgrades needed to keep them going for another decade or so it's less than 1% of the DoD budget. The SLBMs are a different beast entirely since they require more personnel, more expensive basing, and have higher O&M cost that will continue grow unless they replace them with SSBN-X. Unfortunately SSBN-X is going to cost in the high double digits based on how many they'd need to replace as well as recent trends of expected new production ships coming out of the shipyards. Bombers aren't nearly as bad but their costs are still much higher than land based ICBMs, although like others mentioned there is utility for SLBMs and Bombers in conventional mission whereas the same can't be said for ICBMs. From a budget perspective SLBMs are the biggest target on the budget chopping block and it would be interesting to see if the Navy will fight that battle with congress over maintaining their current fleet size.
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Aug 24, 2011 23:34
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Remulak posted:It's not recent but Fallow's National Defense is the classic and it isn't like anything has changed. When I read that book some time ago I thought a lot of it has changed. I keep the book at the office though so can't recall some of the more specific gripes I had about it but from the top of my head it was: Fallows doesn't take into consideration the O&M, Milpers and entitlement consequences of a professional force and its impact on force structure which in the end translate into budgets The comparison between 3rd and 4th gen fighters was apt but I don't remember him addressing the high-low mix much at all. I could have just forgot about it but then again for when the book was published the F-16 and F/A-18 lines were just beginning to ramp up into big numbers I don't remember how much he discussed McNamara's centralization of defense acquisition but I could have sworn he was really hard on Schlesinger given much of what he did was to undo the policies McNamara had enacted. Lots has changed though since the early 80s; the shift from aircraft per sortie to sorties per aircraft in fighter aviation, the formation of the JCIDs process, the shift towards precision guided munitions and other smart weapons, the arrival and departure of the Lead Systems Integrator fad, and the rise of block upgrades of legacy platforms.
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Aug 26, 2011 01:07
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iyaayas01 posted:
Here's my theory on why LSI and to a much lesser extent spiral development on new platforms went so bad. Granted this is going to be very bias towards industry so take it for what it's worth. The big LSI programs, Deep Water, FCS, and to a lesser extent GMD, were the result of a culmination of three factors: A once a generation DoD budget growth that ushered in near double digit growth rates for almost a decade. A development model and contract scheme that not only further disconnected the service program managers from the issues of the program itself but also created fewer budget barriers of cost escalation as the result of requirements creep due to the cost plus nature of these contracts. Contractors' business incentives to accept new requirements for the purposes of pleasing the customer and increasing revenue/earnings in the process. The 2nd and 3rd point compound on one another because as requirements change the additional cost is flowed to subcontractors, which not only causes schedule delays but also makes the program cost a lot more. It also doesn't help that given the nature of cost plus contracts that the LSIs (or primes for the matters) don't reign in out of control subcontractor costs, there's simply no incentive to do so. This is not the case in fixed price contracts because any slippage from the subcontractors results in an earnings hit to the prime. In each of these big LSI models and to a lesser extent in several of the larger spiral development programs like Global Hawk, we've seen the program cost double or even triple in size because the services want these systems to do more things, they see their baseline budgets continue to increase, and the contractors see an expansion of capability and size of program to be good things. Unfortunately history has shown us that once these programs start seeing high double digit or triple digit cost growth they never get anywhere close to the production quantity originally called for. Now I can't say from a net present value perspective what makes more sense to the contractor; milking a development program to the point where the development phase is double the cost of what was planned for the purposes of short term gain with the risk that the quantity produced will be smaller than planned, or keeping it on cost and schedule which in turn realizes the planned production quantity and opens up decades worth of high margin services and support contracts. Which one makes more sense is based much on what you assume the future looks like. There's a constituency out there who believe the services will scrap the PBP model and instead relegate contractor support to contractor-owned IP and shift the rest of the work to in service Depots. Clearly if this happens then the former situation makes more sense. Then again there are many who believe the services can try that and once they find that they're spending more money than before with less force readiness, then they may find the error of their ways.
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Aug 26, 2011 04:26
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grover posted:The numbers sound big and all, but this is a HUGE program with thousands of planes, and $1B only represents a 0.1% increase. The only real reason for concern would be if the problems are unfixable, but it sounds like they are all being addressed, and some of which at no additional cost to the US government. Problem lies in concurrency of development, testing, and production. One $1B mistake actually has a substantial cost multiplier effect since you have to fix all the mistake jets, and delay the test schedule all while you are producing more mistake jets that will later be fixed. It's why they're going to scrap concurrency which will push out IOC another 2-3 years at minimum and slow bleed out the program. This slippage compounds the issue of force readiness in that the rationale for F-16 and F/A-18A-D SLEP goes away since it was contingent on the idea of extending the life for only a few more years until JSF full rate ramps up in the FY16 time frame. It means they have to buy gap-filler aircraft across the services. Last time this happened in any scale was buying the F-4 all while the F-111 floundered and we all know how that turned out. Also keeping the program alive will put tremendous hurt on the navy both in terms of investment accounts and O&M and it won't be surprising when they drop it in favor of affordable solutions. daskrolator fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Dec 13, 2011 |
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Dec 13, 2011 22:17
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Oh wow, I missed some 250+ posts, lots of neat discussion.movax posted:Without tooling, your plant is nothing. If I recall correctly, the F-14 tooling was all ordered destroyed, making it hugely expensive and time-consuming to restart F-14 production, if so desired. I think the A-10 tooling is all gone too. In this respect the tooling issue becomes more significant as the services want to extend the life of their systems and seek replacement parts. Harpoon anti-ship program hit its 40th anniversary not too long ago and many of the tier 2 suppliers went out of business decades ago. Most of that tooling those suppliers possessed is now gone and it makes finding new ones difficult to say the least. When OV-10 was considered for the close air support program the biggest hurdle by far was the issue of re-learning how to build it and recreate all the tooling. The recurring price per unit would have been well below that of a Hawker and Embraer were offering. I had read years ago that the Russians more or less keep their tooling for their major procurement programs, but haven't read anything beyond that. iyaayas01 posted:Ayup. I dunno what happened to Lockheed/Skunk Works in between the SR-71 and the F-35, but whatever it is it isn't good. Kelly Johnson going away and the fact that Skunk Works and General Dynamics' Fort Worth had two different design and production philosophies.
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Jan 22, 2012 19:09
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Despite the fact my career revolves around the development, sale, and uses of aerospace and defense products I have never read a single Tom Clancy book nor have any desire to do so. I understand the allure of them especially on the tech side and maybe I'm missing out, but doesn't really bother me.
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Jan 28, 2012 16:57
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Chantilly Say posted:How much can you say (while keeping your job) about the processing power of modern aircraft? Given how rapidly civilian computing has advanced in the last twenty years I'm just curious whether, say, the device I'm writing this post on has more RAM than the avionics in a fighter that was built in the 80s or 90s. http://www.davi.ws/avionics/TheAvionicsHandbook_Cap_32.pdf
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Jan 31, 2012 05:46
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Forums Terrorist posted:Well if you wanted to save money you could start by nationalising key defence industries. :fascistsay: At a recent defense industrial conference Northrop Grumman's director of strategy gave a presentation that explicitly mentioned the possibility of going back to an arsenal model within certain areas of procurement because there will no longer be sufficient programs to sustain multiple contractors. It's not so much about saving money as it is about maintaining an industrial base that can continue to innovate and a monopolist position by a contractor of a given niche market does not provide for this.
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Feb 1, 2012 02:56
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For those that follow the saga of the F-35 you will find Stephen Trimble's recent blog post about Top Gun 2 to be especially delightful. http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/2012/03/top-gun-2-will-rock-the-f-35-t.html quote:Maverick is becoming an F-35 test pilot. May not be funny to most people but I think this is hysterical especially if you read it while playing the top gun theme song in the background.
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Mar 1, 2012 21:27
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Snowdens Secret posted:The JSF has technical concerns but to say it hasn't had political complications seems overgenerous. I don't see how the deliberate, additional efforts to use the program as a jobs bank, with specific bits and pieces to be built in each supporting congressman's district and each stakeholder nation building their own little doodads, could do anything but ratchet costs and delays. This emphasis on "Where is it built" over "Is it worth a drat" seems to be what bogs down federal projects more and more. This is not to say that supplier footprint can't be a bad thing, 787 supplier nightmares show it can be a deal breaking issue.
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Mar 19, 2012 18:58
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grover posted:Overtime might not be paid, but an Airman's time is not free; burdened labor rate on a military enlistedman is actually WAY higher than for a civilian or contractor, even with additional people/OT included. You can't just factor in those 16 hours he spent on the aircraft, but the 2 years of training, the enlistment bonuses, the health care, the relocation expenses, the military retirement costs, etc. You hit the nail on the head about the whole cost per flight hour issue. Each of the services calculate it differently and utilize a number of methods that can skew the actual cost in either direction. You throw into the mix the work mix between depot and contractors as well as how you spread these costs over an entire fleet of aircraft and it becomes incredibly difficult to get a good answer of what the true cost for operating a given aircraft is.
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Mar 22, 2012 14:42
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On the horizontal surfaced launched followed by underwater to air missile video, if the ship in question didnt have VLS capabilities built into the ship then this would be one way to do it.
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Mar 26, 2012 17:25
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Cyrano4747 posted:I forget the long answer for this kind of thing, and I'm sure someone who actually knows about this will be along shortly to correct me or expand on this, but my understanding of military computer poo poo is that every new "thing" that is developed has to go through some loving obscene testing/authorization/adaptation process that has its roots back in military procurement ca. WW1 or some poo poo. The "Integrated Core Processor" and all the related sub systems are very different than regular computers bought by the private sector. The multiple redundancies as well as the security layer makes the systems very different from their commercial counterparts and makes design, debugging, and other QC activities most people take for granted as a huge issue with development and subsequent upgrades. In my view avionics and mission management software will become the the predominant issue with future combat aircraft. As the lines of code increase substantially and the computer hardware becomes more complicated more and more of the non-recurring costs will fall into the realm of hw/sw.
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Mar 27, 2012 15:36
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Good question on defining procurement process, is it when it becomes a "Program of record", when it has program element, when it enters EMD phase or just TD phase?
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Mar 28, 2012 04:31
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Mr. Despair posted:It was made to launch this guy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moskit , which has a 120km range and travels at mach 3. Still, a Hawkeye I would imagine could spot one from further than 120km out, at least nowadays. Would still probably be hard to intercept one that far out though. Interestingly enough the US bought a number of KH-31s, which are smaller variants of the moskits (but similar characteristics otherwise), in the mid 1990s and retrofitted them into aerial targets.
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Apr 3, 2012 21:41
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DoD has been testing Aim-9X for air to ground applications but it's more of a "like to have" capability in an otherwise highly unlikely mission scenario. They're nearly 5 times as expensive as Hellfire, which is the premiere AGM at the moment and much less effectiveness given its warhead isn't designed for ground targets. The now cancelled NGM program, which was to set to replace AMRAAMs, had similar requirements where they wanted some kind of AGM capability. Again the question of effectiveness comes into mind but if it were a soft target susceptible to any small amount of damage, such as radar installations, then it could have a mission. I don't think that's worthy enough to invest into it only because you have bigger problems if radar installations are still targets.
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Apr 5, 2012 14:36
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wkarma posted:We've been playing with A2G sidewinders for quite a long time. Here's a pic from 1971 of an 9L test at China Lake Now the operators don't give a poo poo about this but the griffins cost nearly twice as much as a hellfire. Now this has more to do with the fact that griffins have never and will likely never reach the kind of full rate production rates that hellfire experiences in its current configuration. Now look at a sidewinder that cost 5 times as much as a hellfire with no real advantage in range, effectiveness, or sensing capability.
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Apr 5, 2012 21:04
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grover posted:Griffins run roughly $100k per missile, if we divide the most recent $9.3M contract by 70 missiles & 20 test missiles. Per wiki, Hellfires run about $68k. Hellfires are cheaper, but not by 5:1, more like 3:2. Prices may come down further once as the system matures, hard to say. If you're referring to my comment about 5:1, that was in reference the a sidewinder vs a hellfire, not a hellfire vs a griffin. I doubt the price will come down that much because they're simply not buying that much volume to reap any decent economies of scale. If they don't buy a ton in these operating conditions that demand low collateral damage effects then they're surely not going to when OEF ends. It'll end up like JAASM or Excalibur where there was an expectation to produce a lot of them only to never get there. mlmp08 posted:Where'd you find the unit cost for the griffin? I'm guessing it based on the handful of contract awards they've had over the years and $100k makes sense intuitively. Most of the cost is in the seeker and guidance and its because doing a dual mode seeker (gps/ins and laser) in a package that small is expensive, especially at low volume. There's a few other Air to ground missiles out there that are a little larger (but smaller than a hellfire) and a little cheaper, but it boils down to what platform you want to put on it. Griffins are attractice not because of harvest hawk but because you can take a lower tier Group 4 UAV like a Predator and give it a deeper magazine relative to that of hellfire. The services are looking into Shadow UAV weaponization and looking for air to ground solutions that can fit within their platforms' payload restraints. daskrolator fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Apr 6, 2012 |
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Apr 6, 2012 04:41
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Speaking of Harpoons, 40th anniversary last year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HSszSESmB0
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Apr 11, 2012 04:10
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