Another Weapon for F-35? - HVPW

[popcorn]

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.

[count_to_10]

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

[arkadyrenko]

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)

[southernphantom]

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.

[count_to_10]

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.

[popcorn]

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.

.....

[arkadyrenko]

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....

[galoot]

VV,

Not as simple a trade as you make it out to be. Stratafied direct dirt impingement as well as defensively oriented structural framing acts like NERA, imparting huge shear forces through alinear effects on deceleration which cause munition tipping, squashout and case deformation crumple as precursors breakup with ultra highspeed impact force 'square' multipliers being reflected in the rise in target resistance.

You can change this by using a system similar to a super cavitating torpedo to create a slipfield as highly energized gas wall which both provides a flow separation tangent around the weapon casing as dirt shunt. And keeps the round from tipping at unusual strike angles on in the face of reinforce target barriers.

But this requires you to make some rather drastic decisions about propulsion vs. ammunition mass as kill effects in the warhead and lost KE in digging.

The above diagram of HVPW is most assuredly faked because both for rigidity and total impulse, you want a dual sleeved weapon with the motor running all the way through to the hardened tip and the inter-cylinder space filled with the secondary fuel material for the gas generator which 'burns the other way' as it feeds ejectors at intervals around the forebody.

The kill effector system being in the structural spacers between these two cylinders with the intent to act as minor fragmentation enablers (the case is literally too hard to shatter effectively) but doing most of their damage as thermal detonation of the remaining propellant.

Which is intentional because these weapons are first and foremost deflagration killers designed to take out WMD materials and/or leadership targets by eating up the oxgen in the wake of a thermobaric blast.

The problem then becomes how much mass you are willing to -lose- as the munition mass augers it's way down through the strata on it's way to the MEF target void detonation point. Vs. how big a boom you want when you get there.

That said, bunkers are going so deep with the ready availability of ATBM and use so many sacrificial voids and other 'obstacle' hardware between layers of interest that unless you are willing to go for earthquake effect vis stratacoupling in a nuclear system, it doesn't really matter whether the delivery platform Is internal or external, an F-15E or a B-2A.

You can't make the bomb big enough or fast enough to retain the energy to dig deep enough to matter.

[mk82]

Galoot my friend! I totally understand your point. Lets arm ourselves with photon torpedoes and super cavitate into dirt shear forces stress aluminium...giberish...giberish....giberish and so forth!

[uclass]

Why not just pick up the SLGSM project and build a medium range ballistic missile with a 1000lb penetrator with DU tip and maybe 500lbs of HE that comes down at Mach 10? That will have the same KE as a 100,000lb bomb at Mach 1.

No need to invade enemy airspace or even take off a plane if the target is less than 2000km away.

[bigjku]

Why not just pick up the SLGSM project and build a medium range ballistic missile with a 1000lb penetrator with DU tip and maybe 500lbs of HE that comes down at Mach 10? That will have the same KE as a 100,000lb bomb at Mach 1.

No need to invade enemy airspace or even take off a plane if the target is less than 2000km away.

Because firing off missiles on a ballistic trajectory is something that always sounds better in theory than in practice when you are in a confused situation with highly stressed decision makers possibly being put in a position where they may interpret a conventional attack as something else and respond accordingly.

I am skeptical of all military plans that are based on a mass firing of ballistic weapons when nuclear powers are involved.

[lookieloo]

Why not just pick up the SLGSM project and build a medium range ballistic missile with a 1000lb penetrator with DU tip and maybe 500lbs of HE that comes down at Mach 10? That will have the same KE as a 100,000lb bomb at Mach 1.

No need to invade enemy airspace or even take off a plane if the target is less than 2000km away.

Because firing off missiles on a ballistic trajectory is something that always sounds better in theory than in practice when you are in a confused situation with highly stressed decision makers possibly being put in a position where they may interpret a conventional attack as something else and respond accordingly.

I am skeptical of all military plans that are based on a mass firing of ballistic weapons when nuclear powers are involved.

Likewise. Heavy reliance on conventional ballistic (and cruise) missiles also begs the question of what to do after one's wad is shot.

[count_to_10]

Mostly, long range conventional ballistic missiles aren't distinguishable from nukes. Unless you want the President to be on the hot line every time you fire one, you are basically risking nuclear war.
Aside from the question of whether treaties have banned them already.

[uclass]

Not necessarily. A few points on that. If we start busting bunkers in the Russian and Chinese homeland, that could be seen as a reason to go nuclear for them anyway. At least against naval targets. I still don't consider war with another nuclear power on their home turf as a realistic option. I appreciate that people have gone there and thought of such options and made up contingencies and it's good to have different tools for different jobs but the likely use of a bunker buster is against a rogue state developing nuclear weapons or storing WMDs underground. I think we should be thinking more Middle East here. Trajectories can be tracked and a ballistic missile with a range of 1750-2000km going to the Middle East from the Gulf isn't going to be mistaken as going to Russia or China, especially if the volume is small. It's a relatively short flight over in 10 minutes and also has benefits as a rapid strike weapon. When other countries like India are already operating such a missile, it's seem daft to hold these kind of reservations about a medium range strike weapon that would probably be used in extremely small volume.

This isn't the same as discussing putting conventional warheads on a Trident and firing it at the Middle East from the Eastern or Western seaboard. It's not like cruise missiles can't carry nukes too and they have comparable range to the SLGSM being discussed.

Mostly, long range conventional ballistic missiles aren't distinguishable from nukes. Unless you want the President to be on the hot line every time you fire one, you are basically risking nuclear war.
Aside from the question of whether treaties have banned them already.

In terms of nukes they are banned, but not for conventional purposes. In the past they were never accurate enough to do the job with a conventional payload though. That has now changed. The choice is now developing and operating an expensive stealth plane, with a live crew and a fairly expensive bunker buster weapon, or using a fairly expensive ballistic bunker buster on its own with reduced risk, operational costs and timescale.

[KamenRiderBlade]

I doubt we'll ever fight Russia / China directly.

It'll probably be more proxy wars or wars for a specific territory.

Think Diaoyu / Senkaku Island

Taiwan

North Korea

Those are the future hot spots