Air-To-Surface Weapons (Missiles and Guided Bombs) General Discussion

[Jschmus]

I did a search a while back whilst looking for one of those Hasegawa JASDF Weapons sets.  I didn't find the set, but I did turn up a little information about alternate weapons schemes that were tested at China Lake in the 60s and 70s.  Apparently, there were all sorts of alternate combinations of weapons with sensors.  One of those was the "Bullwinder", an AGM-12 Bullpup with the IR-sensor from the AIM-9B Sidewinder.


They also tested a "Bombwinder", an M-118 3000-lb bomb with the Sidewinder guidance package and a Shrike nosecone.

[PolluxDeltaSeven]

For my current building, I imagin three different new air-to-ground weapons, anti-radar missiles actually, as SEAD aircrafts are my new hobby! :

-MBDA "ARM-530":
Basically, it's a Super 530 missile refited into an anti-radar missile, as an interim solution before the ARM-Meteor arrival circa 2020.
The first requirement came from the French Navy after the NATO strikes over Yemen in 2005. The Marine Nationale wanted a long-range anti-radar missile for it's Super Etendard in order to escort other Super Etendard fitted in bomber or anti-ship missions. Indeed more than 25 missions were cancelled during the air campaign due to a lack of USN's EA-6B or European Tornado ECR.
Soon, French Armée de l'Air and Egyptian Air Force meet the requirement too in order to fit the weapon under their Mirage 2000.
The AASM missile, that was planed to enter operational service in 2008, was a first answer, but it was only a short/medium-range weapon.

The logical answer was the ARM-Meteor, able to be carried by either the Etendard, Mirage or Rafale. But the very long delays force MBDA to find an interim solution.

Finally, 236 Super 530 missiles were modified with a new engine, a more powerfull but smaller military charge (alowed more fuel) and a new guidance system (the airframe remains the same) adapted from the ALARM one, with better abilities. With their new engine, the missile have a 85km range when fired from high altitude, and more than 40 at low altitude. It's maximal speed is Mach 4,5.


-MBDA SCALP-AR:
(SCALP-AR)
In another storyline, France and UK agreed in 2008 to developp a new kind of anti-radar weapons. The main was to developp a weapon with a cruise missile abilities (range, stealth features etc.) but with the ability to find it's target alone.
The main target for this system was obviously the new S-300 and S-400 SAM site, able to move from some dozen kilometers after a recon flight in few hours in order to avoid the cruise missiles strikes. The SCALP-AR (French name of the missile) had to be able to do loitering in order to find and destroy the SAM site by its own means, like the Tacit Rainbow at its time. But the missiles had to be modular in order to have multipurpose abilities.
It will enter service in 2012.

The result was a basic Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG airframe, but with a smaller military warhead. The aditionnal internal space went to additionnal fuel for the updated turbo-engine and to a bigger and more efficient ENS/ARM (passive antenna) guidance system.
The missile has now a 650km+ range and could be fitted with either a high explosive warhead (to expode the radar itself), submunitions (in order to destroy all the vehicules, the missile carriers and command center for example) or, later (2017) a totally new and exclusive EMP warhead, able to virtually destroy a whole S-400 site with a single explosion.

The missile is also fitted with a missile-to-plane-datalink that able it to be used as a recon single-use UCAV. A special "warhead" was developped for this use with some IR and visual sensors alongside with a SATCOM antenna. The real warhead is reduce to a light high-explosive similar to a SDB warhead, in order to use the missile/UAV against opportunity targets.


-Raytheon AMRARM:
I have no backstory nore definitive name for this one.
I just saw someone building a Shrike from a Sparrow missile (it's the guy who did the USMC Tomcat in the F-14 Tomcat's topic) and so had the idea to do a replacement for the Shrike from the AMRAAM.
It's globaly the same airframe, but with different wings and tails. Just like the Shrike, it does not have the range, speed and abilities of the HARM, but it's a pretty good anti-radar missile, far better that the old Shrike.

Notable fact: it could be used against either ground, sea or air targets. Its sensor is a passive/active antenna coupled with ENS that allowed him to find its target by its own means once at close range (but a manoeuvrable air target could probably escape the missile if it switch its radar off before the ARM reach close range)

It's light weight allowed it to be carried on the AAM pylons of light fighters (F-16, F/A-18C, F-20, Mirage 2000) while the HARM is limited to high-weight pylons. Moreover, the Light ARM could be carried by some aircrafts that usually don't carry ARM, like special operation cargo planes or helicopters (British and US Army Apache carry it, so do the Greek Ka-50/52 and the Spanish Tiger).




Well, I hope it could help you to find ideas maybe. I admit that I really like anti-radar weapons for the moment. Historically, anti-radar weapons were developped from a large variety of airframe (from very fast dedicate missiles like HARM to modified Sidewinder, through "mini-drone" cruise missiles like Tacit Rainbow or propulsed bombs like French ASSM etc...) and some of them were adapted from other weapons (air-to-ground, air-to-air etc..)
For whiff modelers, it could be paradize, as we have ALL the other real weapons as bases!!

[Blacklion213]

i ve got 2  of my own,

ALQM-27A/B Scrambler

a Tomahawk sizes missle for the A model, instead of a CBU in the belly pack it will jamming gear and Chaff / Flare pods, launch from MC-130, B-52, B-1, or B-2, used to make corridors for strike packages to pass through, launched in waves of two, each ones flies oval patterns crossing over each other at the ends, as they fly  both pop chaff and flares untill 400 of each are left ( both carry 1000 or each), they then wait for any SAM Lauches to defend against, can stay aloft for up to 20 hours with add on folding wings and drop tanks, the B model is based on the JASSM, and has 300 C/F, flight time of 5 hours with its twin turbofan engines

[dy031101]

-Raytheon AMRARM:
I have no backstory nore definitive name for this one.
I just saw someone building a Shrike from a Sparrow missile (it's the guy who did the USMC Tomcat in the F-14 Tomcat's topic) and so had the idea to do a replacement for the Shrike from the AMRAAM.
It's globaly the same airframe, but with different wings and tails. Just like the Shrike, it does not have the range, speed and abilities of the HARM, but it's a pretty good anti-radar missile, far better that the old Shrike.

Notable fact: it could be used against either ground, sea or air targets. Its sensor is a passive/active antenna coupled with ENS that allowed him to find its target by its own means once at close range (but a manoeuvrable air target could probably escape the missile if it switch its radar off before the ARM reach close range)

It's light weight allowed it to be carried on the AAM pylons of light fighters (F-16, F/A-18C, F-20, Mirage 2000) while the HARM is limited to high-weight pylons. Moreover, the Light ARM could be carried by some aircrafts that usually don't carry ARM, like special operation cargo planes or helicopters (British and US Army Apache carry it, so do the Greek Ka-50/52 and the Spanish Tiger).

I've kinda thought that Derby might be a good candidate for that, too.

[GTX]

Anyone remember the AGM-109 MRASM?  I remember seeing a picture of one being placed under the wing of a F-16.

Regards,

Greg

[Shasper]

PD7 hit on another idea I've had for sometime, but my rendition of the "ARMRAAM" would look the same as the AIM-120 with the dual mode passive/active MMW radar seeker head & a tungsten/steel fragmentation warhead (similar to the HARM)

Speaking of the HARM, the Navy started working on the next evolution of the -88, dubbed the AARGM. While the project is in  its infancy, my thoughts on this would be replacing the solid rocket motor w/a gel one, dual mode passive/active radar seeker & GPS for guidance.

Blacklion's idea almost came true, back in the late '80s the USN played around with the AGM-136 Tacit Rainbow, which was similar to what he suggested. It got canned due to cost overruns ( see http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/agm-136.htm)

Shas

[Maverick]

Anyone remember the AGM-109 MRASM?  I remember seeing a picture of one being placed under the wing of a F-16.

Regards,

Greg

MRASM is a blast from the past Greg.  I think you're right about the F-16 loadout as I seem to remember something of the same, somewhere, sometime  .  Always thought it looked neat, big honking missile under a comparitively small fighter, but then we missed out and ended up with AGM-84 SLAMs instead.  I believe the idea was a CBU type warhead an an option to a nuke.

[Mossie]

Damian, you need to get yourself a copy of British Secret Projects: Hypersonics, Ramjets & Missiles.  Plenty of air to ground stuff in there that never saw service, as well as SAM's, AAM's & Stand-Off weapons.  Too many to name in full, but I'll mention a few.

Carrying on the Anti-radiation missile theme mentioned above, there was a real world project called SRARM. This was an anti-radar variant of ASRAAM & looked the same except for an offset radar nose.  It was mainly seen as a defensive weapon against aircraft & other missiles, but could have been used against ground radars too.  It was cancelled due to changing requirements.

Hawker Siddley Dynamics developed a laser guided cluster bomb based on the Rapier SAM called Sabre.  It basically looked like Rapier with a enlarged head.  It was designed to replace the BL.755 cluster bomb.

The BAe P.1239, one of the SABA concepts, was designed with an interchangeable dorsal mounted pod.  One of the pods would have contained 72 Merlin 'Smart Mortar' rounds.  These would have been a fire & forget weapon launched above the aircraft, then would be guided to their targets by seeker head & retarding fins.  Intended to be used against armoured columns.

[Jeffry Fontaine]

For an air to ground missile, you can take the AGM-65 Maverick and do the same thing with it to create an extended range AGM.  It would be in the same class as the AGM-53 Condor but with two sets of wings instead.  I have also  considered a scale-o-rama of a 1/32nd scale AGM-114 Hellfire missile to use it as a large variant of the AGM-114 Hellfire in 1/48th scale.  These 1/32nd scale Hellfires are about the same size as a 1/48th scale AGM-65 Maverick and look pretty convincing.  I also considered this with 1/48th scale AGM-114 Hellfire missiles on a 1/72nd scale aircraft for the same purpose.  The overall size of the 1/32nd scale AGM-114 after being subjected to scale-o-rama to a 1/72nd scale model reminds me of an improved version of the Fairey Green Cheese air to surface missile.   

Other air to ground weapons can be created from the old Monogram missile set which had a variety of US and Russian missiles on a display stand.  These missiles were in 1/144th scale and some were a bit too small, but there were several of the larger missiles that are good candidates for conversion to an air delivered weapon with or without fins.  One of these missiles is the Minuteman ICBM which can be reduced in overall length by removing the first stage to create a robust looking missile that could be used as a very large long range stand off missile (VLLRSOM). 

I bought a Bronco myself some months ago. <snip>...</snip>  Still for the weapon, it's a pity that there is no kit available for the "Mk81 GBU" used by the French navy (a 125kg laser guided bomb, derived from the GBU-12, very good weapon to avoid collateral damage in CAS and COIN)

Yannick,

If you are building in 1/48th scale, you could scale-o-rama a 1/72nd scale GBU-12 laser guided bomb to represent your smaller 125kg laser guided weapon.  It is not spot-on but close enough in size to a 1/48th scale 125kg bomb to work for what you have in mind.   

Other options do exist such as taking the Mk81 bomb body and bashing it with the fins and seeker from a GBU-12 in the same scale.  A bit more tedius than the scale-o-rama option but the end results would be about the same. 

[dy031101]

Question: are early Mavericks command-guided?

[Maverick]

No, not really.  They are EO (electro-optically) guided.  The pilot uses a small TV in his aircraft slaved to the AGM-65s seeker head, selects & fixes the target and then launches the weapon.  The weapon steers on the image as fixed in its memory.  Later models use IIR (imaging infra red) or laser.

They are considered 'fire & forget' but they still require the initial 'lock on' by the pilot.


Regards,

Mav

[GTX]

I have to agree with John here, to use the early guided ATMs (such as the Panzerabwehrrakete X-7 Rotkäppchen - see below) would have required either a superhuman pilot or more likely a second seat for a dedicated missile operator.  Even then it may have been decidedly dicey. 

Mind you, an improvement to the X-7 Rotkäppchen was the Steinbock which planned on using infra-red transmitting of the guidance command and therefore didn't require the wires. An automated tracking device was the Pfeifenkopf or Pinsel project. It utilised a machine that computed the changes in angle of the two sighting devices - one was to be aimed at the target, the other at the missile- into commands for the missile. This mechanism was further automated in the Zielsuchgerät ("target acquisition device"). By using an image recognition device called Ikonoskop the missile was to seek its target through it's own optical sensor that compared the image data from the aiming device with the data it received from its own optical sensor. So just maybe there was a chance.  Imagine a 2 seat version with a bunch of these under the wings.



As to the cannon, whilst a large cannon might be pushing it, what about keeping the 30mm and having an anti-armour version of the MK 213/30?

BTW, has anyone seen a good quality line drawing of the Junkers SFP?

Regards,

Greg

[Burncycle]

Airbreathing Maverick seems like an odd choice.  The weapon is comparitively small compared to many ASMs in service with an equally modest warhead.  I can't see the sense in something that was originally designed as a tank-killer being given a turbine engine.

Reminds me of the Have Nap (but with a smaller warhead)

[Maverick]

Exactly BC,

That's my point.  Have Nap has an effective warhead for taking out large structures, etc, rather than the Maverick's shaped charge anti-armour one and I couldn't see a Warthog or Falcon hefting three on a triple rail!!! (but then again, the Buff has twins I guess!)

Regards,

Mav

[Jeffry Fontaine]

The AGM-65 Maverick was designed as a replacement for the radio command link guided AGM-12 Bullpup missile that relied on the pilot to steer the weapon to the target.  The AGM-65 Maverick was a fire and forget type of weapon that only required the pilot to lock the missile on to the target before launch, after that the missile self-guided to the target.  There are two different warhead options for the AGM-65 Maverick.  The original 57 kg (125 lb) WDU-20/B shaped-charge warhead which was capable of destroying armor and other hard targets which is in use by the USAF and USMC.  The second warhead is the 136 kg (300 lb) WDU-24/B penetrating blast-fragmentation warhead which was developed for the Navy version of the AGM-65 and it is designed to penetrate ship type targets prior to detonation.

Now that collateral damage has become a watchword in servicing targets during combat in urban areas, these two warhead options are considered to be overkill for the majority of the urban type targets.  This is one of the major reasons for the current focus on smaller guided weapons such as the TOW and Hellfire and the recent developments of a precision guided warhead for the 70mm Hydra 70 type FFAR.  The smaller warheads with higher performance or specialized explosive fillings (Thermobaric or DIME) coupled with a good guidance package are just as effective for accomplishing the mission as a 2000 pound bomb with the added advantage of no bad press coverage that comes from an entire city block being leveled to accomplish the mission. 

Regarding the Longhorn, it was proposed but that was about it.  I remember seeing the advertisements for that design which included a nice color picture of the missile.  What killed the program?  Any number of reasons I would hazard to say.  Perhaps it was considered as a direct competitor to the AGM-84 Harpoon in performing the anti-ship missile role?   Performing the same type of mission with a substantially smaller warhead and shorter range?  What was Longhorn going to bring to the party that was not already there?

If you want to read a bit more on the technical details on missiles, go to the Directory of U.S. Military Rockets and Missiles (Copyright © 2001-2008 Andreas Parsch)