Forum: F-35 Armament, Stores and Tactics

Evil thought of the day:

Would taking the Norwegian JSM, reducing the warhead size in half (still leaves a 125lb warhead), and increase the fuel and sensors make it a very sneaky & long-ranges anti-support missile targeted towards AWACS, ISR, IFR, bombers, etc?

Being an LO airframe, turbine powered, and subsonic means that it should run pretty cool and be able to sneak in pretty far before detection.

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First thought... increase JSM wing size for flight at AWACS altitude?

The AWACS would still be able to detect it at some not-insignificant range, and a lot of AWACS are going to be capable of fairly hi mach. Are you sure it would be able to catch up?

A laser would be ideal against an AWACS. Something akin to the ABL, either from a ship or a satellite. But again, practicality and not theory alone dictates reality.

Laser satellites are still far off... but the Navy is putting one on a ship off the coast of Iran next year.

For a laser you would have to be in line of sight, and range can be limited by absorption and scattering. A cruise missile that launches multiple missiles might be a better bet.

A Meteor employing a lofted profile should be able to reach out pretty far.

A Meteor employing a lofted profile should be able to reach out pretty far.

I wonder as to the feasibility of a two-stage missile, using a subsonic (turbojet-powered) VLO flight profile to 'sneak up' on the AWACS, then firing a supersonic kill vehicle when detected or within effective terminal range.

southernphantom wrote:

I wonder as to the feasibility of a two-stage missile, using a subsonic (turbojet-powered) VLO flight profile to 'sneak up' on the AWACS, then firing a supersonic kill vehicle when detected or within effective terminal range.

That, or just a standard booster stage that gives it a ballistic arch at high Mach in the upper atmosphere -- which would probably be cheaper. I've only seen one two-stage A2A missile proposal, and that was tube fired. It seems an obvious enough way to get more range into a missile, but there must be something that has kept anyone from actually doing it.

Take the booster stage from the NCADE and mate it to CUDA.

SpudmanWP wrote:

Take the booster stage from the NCADE and mate it to CUDA.

The thought had crossed my mind. I wonder if an IR (or electro-optical) seeker wouldn't better, though.
Still, given that two stages seems like such an obvious answer to the long range end stage maneuverability problem, why aren't there some out there already? What is the limiting factor?

I think the reason why CUDA, PAC-3, EAPS, etc went with a radar based seeker is that being a HTK vehicle might require a more precise ranging seeker which cannot be done with IR.

SpudmanWP wrote:

I think the reason why CUDA, PAC-3, EAPS, etc went with a radar based seeker is that being a HTK vehicle might require a more precise ranging seeker which cannot be done with IR.

Granted, but the sidewinder does well enough. Also AWACS probably have a fair amount jamming capability.

Sidewinder has a warhead so it can miss and still "hit". A HTK does not have that option.

The AWACS sensor area would not pick up the plunging AAM till it goes active. Not much chance for jamming (assuming it jams in the right band).

Forum: F-35 Armament, Stores and Tactics

ETOTD: JSM as an anti-AWACS weapon