M270 MLRS and M142 HIMARS Developments

Scott Kenny said:
It can engage moving targets like TELs in all weather. TEL for anything within range is now fair game, even if it's on the move after the shot revealed the TEL location.

If the Russians don't have any TELs for (missile type) they can't fire any more. No matter how many (missile type) they have in stockpiles.
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If you know where a TEL is, just fire at at it. If you don't, why are you firing artillery in the first place?

SBD-2 is a much more expensive weapon with a lot more flexibility that is not useful in an artillery deployment. More over, if no one is interested in ground launched SBD-1, it hard to imagine anyone is interested in the dramatically more expensive version.
 
NMaude said:
It could also be used against ships too.
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Technically yes, practically an SDB would fall inside the engagement envelope of everything from 20mm to 100mm to every single SAM a ship carried. So it seems like a poor use of such.
 
Josh_TN said:
If you know where a TEL is, just fire at at it. If you don't, why are you firing artillery in the first place?
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The advantage is that SDB2 can be told "there was a TEL *here*, so sweep south-to-north up this road till you find it or run out of airspeed."

And IIRC you can watch the video as the Stormbreaker goes it via datalink.


Josh_TN said:
SBD-2 is a much more expensive weapon with a lot more flexibility that is not useful in an artillery deployment. More over, if no one is interested in ground launched SBD-1, it hard to imagine anyone is interested in the dramatically more expensive version.
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The ability to hit moving targets is a much under-rated thing.
 
Josh_TN said:
Technically yes, practically an SDB would fall inside the engagement envelope of everything from 20mm to 100mm to every single SAM a ship carried. So it seems like a poor use of such.
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It would be a very difficult object to target given its small size and no doubt could be programmed to take evasive manoeuvres in its terminal phase.
 
Scott Kenny said:
The ability to hit moving targets is a much under-rated thing.
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Even with a very short engagement time (from detection to fire order to munition arriving in the target area) you'd struggle to get an SDB2 (or even for that matter a powered Spear) over the target in time if it was moving, particularly as the MMW radar has limited search range (particularly for a gliding weapon that is attempting to manage energy and prolong a glide). Basically by the time the munition arrived the target could have moved out of its MMW range, and in the case of SDB2 its possible MMW range AND flight time for a search. And when the munition costs >$250k per round thats a real issue....(and some FMS cases are >$500k per round...).

The UK is looking at Land Precision Strike, basically a larger Asraam missile shape with Brimstone seeker head for engagements against fixed and moving targets from M270. The range on that is >80km, and the missile will be much faster to target as well...I think that is realistically the limit at present. The proposed P3 missile from c20 years ago was a similar range. The longer ranged LRAE which dispenses a package of 3 x Outrider UAS from a GMLRS-ER for search/detection and re-broadcast, followed by 3 x FFLMM from a follow on munition could extend moving target capability out to 150km+...but it will come at some cost...and I'm not sure it will proceed past a demonstration.
 
NMaude said:
It could also be used against ships too.
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PrSM already has an antiship seeker capacity in work (Increment 2).

www.thedefensepost.com

New Precision Strike Missile Seeker to Turn It Into Ship Killer

The US Army flight tested a Precision Strike Missile multimode seeker last year that enables the missile to perform maritime targeting.
www.thedefensepost.com www.thedefensepost.com

For the US missions, you need the range PrSM offers to have a credible antiship capacity in the Pacific.

As to moving targets and GMLRS, the US seems to have a different philosophy. If you have a target location and persistent tracking, you can use a standard guided rocket with in-flight course correction rather than stuffing a multimodal seeker into the projectile. Interestingly it's the same data link proposed for Patriot, which tells you something about how the US th inks about domain awareness. A track is a track, as far as we are concerned.

www.thedefensepost.com

Lockheed Device Enables HIMARS Munitions to Strike Moving Targets

Lockheed Martin has demonstrated a communication device that provides in-flight target updates to munitions such as GMLRS.
www.thedefensepost.com www.thedefensepost.com
 
Scott Kenny said:
The advantage is that SDB2 can be told "there was a TEL *here*, so sweep south-to-north up this road till you find it or run out of airspeed."

And IIRC you can watch the video as the Stormbreaker goes it via datalink.



The ability to hit moving targets is a much under-rated thing.
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If you just get to the target faster you do not have to concern yourself with movement. Gliders are going to take an almost order of magnitude more time to go down range.

GBU-53 can receive link 16; I am not sure if it can transmit. Even if so that has nothing to do with sending full motion video, though it could perhaps send a notification that it had found a target and was about to hit it like the most recent HARMs.
 
NMaude said:
So what would the resulting unit price be then?
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Well $67.6m is stated to be 2.5% in the article, so the new total cost of 18,000 missiles is 39x67.6m = 2636.4m. 1 missile is 2636.4/18000 = 0.146m = $146k.

Unclear whether this is for GMLRS-ER though. That would be my guess though.
 

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