Anon

Imagine a helo hovering behind a hill(or structure, or whatever else), firing it's guided 2.75" FFAR on a looping trajectory over the hill, and then the pilot selecting and locking onto a NLOS target after the rocket 'tipped over'.(because of it's trajectory the launch platform would still have LOS to the weapon at this point)

That would be a very useful capability for a LOAL AGM, be it a rocket, Hellfire, or Maverick:

The ability to kill your enemies point hardened targets while retaining 100% cover and concealment with respect to your target.

No idea if this rocket can do that(the technology certainly exists- though perhaps it is not quite so miniturized?), but it would be one hell of a mean capability.

With a 13lb HEAT warhead(IIRC 2.75" Hydra rockets have either a 10lb or optional 13lb payload), and a top-attack profile, an Apache with four 19rd Rocket pods could theoretically destory as many as 76 distinct armored/hardened targets. With Javelin equivelant IIR 'fire and forget' type guidance, as soon as the gunner LOAL'd each rocket, he could immediately fire a new one before the last one had even hit.

In this manner, a single AH-64 behind a good sized ridge or hill could potentially smash a reinforced Bn sized armored attack in mere minutes.

When i was in the military the catch phrase(before 'transformation' was the order of the day) was "FORCE MULTIPLICATION"...and the above weapons system description certainly represents BOTH in my opinion.

GGTharos

The new versions of the maverick have LOAL capability, both through Man-In-The-Loop and through automated capability, IIRC (adn the latter is not too well liked). The AGM-65 however can -use- the LOAL capability because this missile can reach some 20nm out when launched in certain flight profiles.


I'll state an opinion now:

The FFAR with LOAL would have to be automated, as the flight time is quite short - I would claim too short for a person to find and lock a target. The range is also not so good. I also am not confident that you could fit the MITM datalink into it.

Furthermore, consider that an IR seeker is typically the equivalent of looking through a 'soda straw'. While Mavericks have (relatively) wide fields of view, they are queued on target using hud symbology, targetting pods, and a view of what the seeker is showing you - ie. you see more than the missile, so you slew the seeker onto the target to put it intot he missile's FoV.

This implies that doing some sort of LOAL with an FFAR is very infeasible, due to basically not knowing where the target is, and the requirement to search for a target.

Keep in mind that Javelin can fit a larger seeker on it than the FFAR, more than likely, or the same - and the Javelin's seeker is 64x64 pixels ... you don't really have much of an image there ... whereas mavericks have large, 640x480 (at least, IIRC) FPAs providing you with -relatively- high resolution images.

So, while ti is a neat idea to use FFARs this way, it is not exactly feasible.

There exists a weapon that works in a way you 'want' this thing to, but it's actually quite a bit dumber. Look up the CBU-97's skeets

Anon

The old FOG-M Fiber Optic Guided Missile worked how i described too, except that you had to steer it home, it had no LOAL, but you'd fire it and then pick out the target after it was at altitude and leveled off.

It was an interesting design that never really went anywhere, but supposedly, it did work well.

GGTharos

INdeed - and IIRC there is also a missile which uses a similar solution now but with LOAL. The problem is that you need to know where the target is with respect othe weapon fairly well - IMHO anyway.

You're basically looking through a 'soda straw' for the target, which is a problem.

Anon

Hmmm, through a straw you say?



I can relate.