"Once the rocket's gone up

Who cares where it comes down?

That's not my department"

says Wernher von Braun

Goddess help us if the Americans get their hands on something like this. We've already had a few friendly fire incidents with them...

Tired of all this crap - nuke'em all. Faster cheaper. Make nice sunsets for a few years.

I'll be in my bunker having my first coffee of the day.

Artillery is still cheaper than the equivalent air strike and can deliver more explosive, although at a higher risk and not all at once..

Weren't the US working on a laser guided artillery shell? What happened to that?

With all that sitting around the artillery boys (and girls), have obviously been spending their time wisely---playing 'Atomic Tanks'. Excellent!

Mine's the one with wings.

"Weren't the US working on a laser guided artillery shell? What happened to that?"

http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m712.htm

Employed in Gulf1 ('91). Superceded if not obsoleted now by Excalibur.

That's the one, wouldn't want to be under a salvo of them buggers...

6km range as well, so got the reach on the teleban.

The British army have a tendency to use Javelins - the missile system, not the pointy sticks - at 65 grand a pop.

If these munitions could stay in the air for hours at a time, and could attack targets over a reasonable area, why couldn't they just be fired when a target has been identified and authorised for destruction, rather than launched speculatively earlier on?

Is it likely that the people firing the things will have moved too far away to fire them on demand by the time they are needed? Does artillery generally move around so much (and/or would the range of these weapons be so poor?)

Presumably these things wouldn't be at all cheap, and the longer they have to stay airborne, the more expensive they will be, and the larger/heavier they will be, and the fewer would be able to be carried with a given amount of capacity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALARM_missile

"During the 1999 'Allied Force' offensive in Kosovo, Luftwaffe Tornado ECR, USAF Wild Weasel F-16s and US Navy EA-6B Prowlers attempted to destroy a Serbian air defence radar with HARMs. After almost 100 attempts, the RAF was called in and the radar was destroyed with a single ALARM, thanks to its loiter capability."

If it says so in Wiki it must be true.

One day Lewis Page will write an article who's conclusion isn't to just buy American..

Not sure how it'll work in practice but the LM is an interesting idea, if they're really clever it'll act as a cheap UAV asset in the 10 hours before it gives up the ghost.

As for the price, I suppose you're buying 10 hours of the enemy keeping it's head down.

This thing is run by squaddies, not officers.

If they don't find a target within the fixed lifetime, it self-destructs.

So the squaddy in charge will be 'gently encouraged' to make sure he finds a target next time before the expensive gadget gets wasted.

So he will make sure to find a target.

So Johnny Foreigner will moan and complain just because said target happened to be an ordinary bloke walking down the road.

So the Army will loudly deny this and insist that they have killed a terrorist.

So Johnny Foreigner will get very angry, and the military situation will get worse.

Result: More terrorist kills for the politicians to boast about, more military problems requiring more investment in armaments firms, more requirement for draconian laws.

Hey, it's all win!

With the failed HARMs, is that down to the missiles just being pants, or to being fired off when there wasn't actually anything for them to target?

If the USP for a loitering missile is for anti-radiation jobs, and we already *have* an anti-radiation missile that can loiter...

Can't the Hermes 450 based 'Beerkeeper' system stay in the air many hours longer (to help keep the beer cool at altitude) than the US 'Creeper' system? Wouldn't that amount to the change in pocket money between the two systems (not to mention economics of scale/unit purchases)????

More importantly, can we combine airborne video surveillance with the Big Brother game show? Whomever gets 'voted out' at the end of the week (via rip off phone calls and faked votes) gets to be shredded and filled into a jam jar. We could have a nice z-list of celebrities who could press the button too... and of course, the British military would get a cut from the phone vote rip-off tohelp them fund some of their new shiny shiny toys....

Now back to the Running Man.

The HARM missiles themselves work extremely well for what they are intended; See a target, launch missile, home-in and explode at destination.

The problems re: Serbia were that the "targets" (This is anecdotal from interviews with Serbians on the gound involved in what they determined was resistance to "outside interference". For information peruse some of the military forums such as military.com or fas.org etc.) were very often screened by modified home microwave ovens. Turn on real targeting radar, ping enemy, scare up an incoming bogie which you track. When the bogie gets close to known firing distance shutdown "real" radar and turn on half-dozen false emitters. Result: dead microwave. Cost: $500 tops. Expended HARM. Cost: $317k.

Article here gives some data. Note especially the description of them not knowing friend-from-foe nor hitting the "intended" target.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/agm-88.htm

"it would mean a lot of people in various arms plants here in Europe having to go and find honest work"

What? You mean to say that the arms industry is dishonest?

I'd rather work in an arms plant than be, for example, a politician or a lawyer, or work for BT. At least my customers would know exactly where they stood with my products and services.

What's this Javelin you're talking about? The only references I could find on a brief Google were to a current US MAW and an obsolete UK SAM. Both shoulder launched and not really the purview of the Artillery, nor suitable for the sort of fire mission that artillery generally gets called upon to deliver, being point attacks rather than area.

"How long have we got left?"

"5 minutes"

"Waste not want not, where's Russell T Davies?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6O6275L7vU

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGM-148_Javelin

It's an IR guided anti-tank weapon, the army use it on the taleban because they (the army) have no light artillery. Although why don't they use mortars for that?

Your comments on suitability are quite correct.

If you have a nice loitering munition then the solution is to encourage it to cease loitering, by either giving it a false target (can't be that difficult if its computer controlled and much easier if its squaddie controlled) or just shooting it down?

Actually gunners have pretty well stopped being infantry for the moment, and are fully involved firing light artillery in Afganistan.

The LM concept as a 'war winner' has been around for a decade at least, however, its only recently that technology has reached the stage where it can be 'low cost' (no doubt a relative term).

The advantages of LM over armed UAVs is that they can be in more places at once. LM will probably be fired from their box strapped to the back of a truck, no UAV landings, return flights, sortie rates, refuelling, servicing, etc, etc. You've got 50 UAVs, you'll be lucky to much more than a third of them in the air over possible targets. With LM you can have 50 over 50 different places. However, UAVs may be used to control some of them, particularly against targets in depth, where squaddies are a bit thin on the ground (but not entirely missing).

While the LM controller (or at least the guy who is told you've got a clutch of LM nearby, can hit whatever you want 30 secs after its picked) will not be an officer, he/she will have an officer nearby probably selecting the actual targets including running a quick mental check on what the lawyers said to ensure no war crimes.