Forum: F-35 Armament, Stores and Tactics

count_to_10 wrote:

arkadyrenko wrote:

I enjoy it because it is a critical, and under-reported, change in military planning for the future. It marks a fundamental change from the past 20 years, when GPS and precision bombing was all the rage, to a more realistic and more interesting future.

As it portends a return to great-power military development, much more interesting than anti-terrorism, and a new wave of technological development it is pretty kointeresting to me.

In either case, whether or not I enjoy it, it is a fact and will spawn a whole host of interesting elements in the future. (It also represents a potential advantage for the US, if the US can fight in a GPS denied environment, the US won't have any fear about denying GPS (or the Chinese equivalent) as part of a theater wide EW strategy)

At some point, the enemies of the US are going to deploy GPS guided weapons. I wonder how far along we are with area denial for that.

It wouldn't be a stretch to assume that the country that pioneered a technology wouod also have a superior understanding of it's weaknesses and how to exploit them. The DARPA initiative to mitigate the risk of over dependency on GPS points to this.

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Probably classified. Wouldn't want to give any hints to anyone else.

The other possibility, popcorn, is that the country that develops the system doesn't realize its weakness. The country becomes too dependent on the technology.

That doesn't appear to be the case here, at least for GPS. Other countries already assuredly have satellite guided munitions. If the US can develop an ability to fight in a satellite degraded environment while retaining precision strike, that would be a massive advantage. Its another step ahead of China and Russia.

About the wing kit, the only reason I'd skip the wing kit initially is to speed up the deployment of the rocket penetrator. The less elements that need to be integrated, the better.

Though, instead of the wing kit, the US should look at the French rocket propelled Laser guided bombs. Those may allow a wider range of launch altitudes and speeds for a given distance. (Doesn't force the F-35 to be at 10k ft to get x number of miles)

The real question is whether this planning is in response to expected neutralization of GPS by the enemy, or a voluntary deactivation of the system to prevent its use by the enemy.

southernphantom wrote:

The real question is whether this planning is in response to expected neutralization of GPS by the enemy, or a voluntary deactivation of the system to prevent its use by the enemy.

The Chinese seem to be setting up their own.

arkadyrenko wrote:

The other possibility, popcorn, is that the country that develops the system doesn't realize its weakness. The country becomes too dependent on the technology.

That doesn't appear to be the case here, at least for GPS. Other countries already assuredly have satellite guided munitions. If the US can develop an ability to fight in a satellite degraded environment while retaining precision strike, that would be a massive advantage. Its another step ahead of China and Russia.

About the wing kit, the only reason I'd skip the wing kit initially is to speed up the deployment of the rocket penetrator. The less elements that need to be integrated, the better.
Development work is routinely done in parallel
Though, instead of the wing kit, the US should look at the French rocket propelled Laser guided bombs. Those may allow a wider range of launch altitudes and speeds for a given distance. (Doesn't force the F-35 to be at 10k ft to get x number of miles
Why 10K feet? Wings well above that altitude.

.....

popcorn - Well see if they "do it in parallel." Really, wing kits and rocket boosts are separate issues, they can add to each other, but first they need to be developed. I don't think the USAF will take the risk of combining the two separate programs at the onset. That is all.

About the 10k feet, my point was that with a wing kit, you need a certain altitude to achieve a certain range. I think the USAF should look at the French rocket propelled LGBs as a possible weapon. That allows you to get a certain range from lower altitudes (ie 1,000 feet or lower). Also, it gives the weapon a bit faster closing time which gives point defenses less time to react.

As for the GPS, I think the US development has two legs.

1) Other countries are actively pursuing GPS area denial and spoofing technology. North Korea (and Iraq) have GPS jammers. While you can shoot at the jammers with HARMs, there could come a time when you won't have the luxury of rolling back the jamming envelop. One such case is if you're doing a deep strike against a hardened position at the beginning of a war (which, coincidentally enough, is what the rocket assisted hard target penetrator is supposed to be used for). If the Norks cross the DMZ, the US and RoK won't have enough aircraft and time to hit the GPS jammers. They'll have to deal with the massive target list of fixed assets.

2) I wouldn't be surprised if the US was developing its own area satellite navigation jamming equipment. This may become a necessity against enemies armed with their own satellite guided bombs. For example, if the US can jam or spoof the Chinese system, that may radically reduce the usefulness of cruise missiles against Guam. Imagine all the Chinese missiles routed into the sea....

Forum: F-35 Armament, Stores and Tactics

Another Weapon for F-35? - HVPW