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APKWS Hits the Fleet
- Thread starter SynixMan
- Start date
And the whole crew better die, or else anyone remaining might get held accountable for losing an aircraft ...
Busdriver, your point is right on. What bothers me most on this topic is that Big Navy loves to talk about how helos are going to be the sponge for the ship, and yet as a community, we have zero tolerance for training accidents and a totally risk averse mindset when it comes to training like we [plan to] fight. While these conversations about which warheads best suit which foreheads are intellectually stimulating, the sad reality is, in many cases, they put the horse before the cart.
I work with a Penguin advocate. One mention of that missile and standby for at least an hour worth of penguin praise.
Sounds like a great missile if you know that everyone in front of you is a bad guy, kind of crappy if you're not sure who's who.
In a non-strait body of water (read: N. Atlantic), it's not bad because of how you can set up the fly-swatters. The big problem was that they rarely worked and we had no way of fixing them. I never flew with one on the rail (I showed up at my first squadron right as they were shooting the last one that my squadron would ever get), only blew up lots of Ruskies in the sim with them. However, that same last flight where they were going to shoot it, it hung fire-ed, one release actuated and then it just slid sideways, hanging off the BRU. Oops. The AW had the idea of putting his let out the window and kicking it. The HAC intervened.
It really is unfortunate because reality should be the exact opposite. This is not putting the cart before the horse, this is tactical experts telling the boss that his plan will not work. The emperor has no clothes, we will not be successful, the mission will fail.
I really am curious about APKWS and it's ability to ripple fire and it's min range. I'm thinking ripple fire 6-9 rockets that I only have to support for a couple seconds, it almost becomes really big bullets at close range. You're still inside the WEZ, so Lawman is still correct, it sucks but it's still better than any type of gun with no computer to help.
Go to an operational test squadron. These are the reasons that we conduct OT, to characterize the performance of a new weapons system and to develop the best tactics.
Couldn't agree more.
So far, this tactic seems to be the best compromise of exposure and kill potential. It is funny, though, as you get to your higher numbers in the ripple fire, you begin to approximate the cost of ... Hellfire
Can anyone with Hydra experience chime in here? Unguided performance should be an absolute baseline if nothing else.
Couldn't agree more.
So far, this tactic seems to be the best compromise of exposure and kill potential. It is funny, though, as you get to your higher numbers in the ripple fire, you begin to approximate the cost of ... Hellfire
Can anyone with Hydra experience chime in here? Unguided performance should be an absolute baseline if nothing else.
Real hydras fly straighter than the blue training speeds you've probably shot. Better quality control on the rocket motor to prevent inherent thrust misalignment (biggest accuracy detractor in rockets). Even so to give you an idea the "danger close" range for them is nearly double a hellfire at less than 2km. So the accuracy of a single rocket still isn't outstanding.
Problem is warhead. Your standard M151 has a ten pound warhead. It's fragments aren't that big, it's pattern isn't that thick and that's when it hits dense level ground not water. 10 meters is considered to be the "kill radius" and really by definition that means the target is likely to be dead/critically wounded within 5 min of impact by the NATO lethality standard. So with you guys shooting at boats unless you drop the thing on the hull somewhere your likely effect is probably nothing at all. We have the same problem in sand, the warhead penetrates the surface and detonates wasting fragmentation energy on the terrain and not actually generating useful pattern. That's one of the reasons we love M255 flechette warheads. Whatever it hits, so long as its not thicker skinned than your average car, is dead or dying. I can't see this getting better with a weapon that more than likely sacrifices warhead on the grounds that it's "accurate enough to not need it."
And as for the penguins fire and forget only working if your not worried about IFF/civcas, the Lima Hellfire is the same way. Not designed to discriminate and better in an environment where we can just tell it "Fula is full of targets, everything east of phase line _____ is hostile." So if that's the hang up on fire and forget than the only option is something like a FLIR maverick or a radar missile limited to Lock Before Launch only and won't "hunt" if it can't see the target from the rail.
I find this statement amusing, but continue...
Concur.
Attachments
At least the front two pieces have stopped moving
Shitty...
LOAL adds a whole big bag of stupid stretching the min range on Hellfire out a lot. Now granted that's with it doing a G biased climb to altitude for best range but still. Closest I can shoot a kilo model is 1500 meters, and that's I I'm less than 50 feet above target altitude otherwise add another 500. That's why we always shot LOBL. No min altitude range add on, and you don't need more than 400 feet of ceiling between you and the clouds to shoot.
Sorry forgot you guys are all lift queens.