Tomahawk Block IV/V cruise missile

totoro said:
1. well obviously the working theory then is that the photo in question of a missile in flight is NOT a USN missile but Israeli one. (despite perhaps erronously labeled images)
2. I don't think popeye mockup images are relevant to the real thing. there's like one or two photos of some design that likely dates to the late 1990s or maybe very early 2000s. It's perfectly possible there were other design iterations since then.
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Well if there doesn't seem to be any connection that what the Popeye Turbo, why do we start the hypothesis with it?
 
Josh_TN said:
As to the forward swept wing “tomahawk”; that differs so radically from the Blk 4/5 it is hard to imagine it is in the same family.
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Agreed.

It could be something Israeli. Or it could be an undisclosed US weapon of some sort.

In 2019, the USAF retired CALCM without a direct replacement. JASSM could fulfill some of the role, especially in the ER version, but the warhead is fairly small.

Could this is an undisclosed CALCM replacement from the 2010s? Possibly something that beat out the original canard-equipped JASSM XR that LM briefly outed in 2014?
 
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Cirov said:
I'm not convinced that terrain-hugging is a meaningful advantage anymore. I mean, fifty years ago the B-1 was nearly canceled as a terrain-hugging bomber because airborne radar rendered that mission obsolete. A terrain-hugging aircraft is, strictly speaking, less detectable than the alternative; but if it can still be detected 50-100km away, does that make enough of a difference? Tomahawk will probably be detected en route to target by enemy air forces, or passively detected by an acoustic network, and a lot of them will be shot down by fighters using simple heat seekers.

And Tomahawk doesn't have a supersonic terminal dive, either, so attrition will be brutal once it engages enemy point defenses. Enemy gun and missile systems at the target will be extremely effective. All of this doesn't necessarily prevent a few leakers from getting through, but it means you need to fire 200+ TLAM to get an effect on target of 20 TLAM. That is blatantly unaffordable at the current price point, I'm in agreement with joshjosh.
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Your not seeing tomahawk from 50 to 100 km out, its going to be more like 20 to 30 (that's gust what turane hugging dose) and your not going to be able to afford to put sams sites on every available path, and an enemy airforce is going to have bigger thing to worry about then tomahawks in a war against the us.

Also the b1 was almost canceled because stealth was just around the corner. the tomahawk was created during the same time period if turane hugging wasn't considered viable In the 80s then why would we have procured tomahawk in the first place?

An acoustic network may actually help dectet a turane hugging missile better then radar but that doesn't mean in enemy has the assests to intercept anyway. And do we have any data that supersonic terminal actually lowed defense effectiveness?
 
The missile layout screams more so AGM-129 than AGM-86.

images (10).jpeg

Not that this is the same missile, but the overall features have thus an established history in US service. Perhaps with more advanced anti-air systems fielded by the adversaries of the US, some of these features were adapted for a new version of Tomahawk which result in a related but not really the same missile. I could see how WESTPAC might necessitate such a development and how this might have been a low-stakes field test under combat conditions.
 
EmoBirb said:
The missile layout screams more so AGM-129 than AGM-86.

View attachment 804025

Not that this is the same missile, but the overall features have thus an established history in US service. Perhaps with more advanced anti-air systems fielded by the adversaries of the US, some of these features were adapted for a new version of Tomahawk which result in a related but not really the same missile. I could see how WESTPAC might necessitate such a development and how this might have been a low-stakes field test under combat conditions.
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So basically a secret stealth Tomahawk variant?
 
Possibly the forward swept wing allows the existing airframe to carry a heaver warhead by moving the wing center of lift forward. It would need only a change of the wing pivot stops and minimal changes to the wings.
 
Cjc said:
Your not seeing tomahawk from 50 to 100 km out, its going to be more like 20 to 30 (that's gust what turane hugging dose) and your not going to be able to afford to put sams sites on every available path, and an enemy airforce is going to have bigger thing to worry about then tomahawks in a war against the us.
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SAM sites can't see a terrain-hugging object very far out, but a surface radar is not the only sensor operated by a peer enemy. Networked airborne radar systems, which these days includes fighters, can pick out a low-altitude object from a much greater distance. Once a track is established, ground or air fires can be vectored--it might be shot down by radar-guided SAMs, or a training jet firing heatseekers. It isn't a particularly difficult target.

If the enemy is afraid to radiate because of active sensor denial, they will still be flying, floating, or mounting networks of passive sensors, depending on the terrain. The Ukrainians frequently get a track on Russian missiles while they're still in Russia, but they certainly pick them up once they cross the border and start flagging the tower-mounted acoustics. A peer enemy will certainly be doing the same.
Cjc said:
Also the b1 was almost canceled because stealth was just around the corner. the tomahawk was created during the same time period if turane hugging wasn't considered viable In the 80s then why would we have procured tomahawk in the first place?
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Because they are completely different technologies in different niches? Obviously?

That's like asking why we kept putting guns on tanks even though we retired the battleships. Terrain hugging wasn't viable for bombers in the 80s, because bombers are big and expensive enough to be a rare occurrence. Tomahawk missiles are small (harder to detect for older airborne radar systems) and are cheap enough to be launched in the dozens for every bomber. If half the Tomahawks get caught, it doesn't matter, we were going to expend them anyway. Or, so goes the likely thinking in the 1980s. Flying low did a much better job, relatively speaking, since there were fewer other sensors around to pick up the slack.
Cjc said:
An acoustic network may actually help dectet a turane hugging missile better then radar but that doesn't mean in enemy has the assests to intercept anyway. And do we have any data that supersonic terminal actually lowed defense effectiveness?
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A peer enemy, by definition, should be expected to have the assets to intercept a subsonic cruise missile. I'm not arguing that Tomahawk isn't a useful weapon, it works fine for bombing technicals. I'm arguing that it is too expensive for plinking technicals, and it isn't high enough quality to fly through defended airspace.

Admittedly, I don't have a source on hand claiming that flying faster makes intercept harder. The vague proof is that ballistic missiles, which are fast, seem to have a lower shootdown rate than cruise missiles, which are slow. The other vague proof is that everyone is betting hard on stealth or hypersonic weapons, and if hypersonics were no more difficult to shoot down, that would be a foolish bet.
Josh_TN said:
Low altitude flight is still an effective method of evasion. If nothing else, it at least postpones engagement by long range systems, and it forces those systems to be very close to the target.

Nothing with supersonic speed approaches tomahawk range, outside of far more expensive intermediate ranged ballistic missiles.

It definitely has a niche to fill, though a cheaper and easier to produce weapon is needed as well.
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Emphasis mine. Yes, it does postpone detection to fly low. Fifty years ago, it postponed detection until you came over the horizon (pretty much, not in all cases or sensors). But now, it reduces detection until you get picked up by airborne sensors, active or passive, or a cheap network of passive acoustic sensors. Flying high might get you detected at 200 km, flying low with all of these other sensor options might get you detected at 150km. (Numbers are purely illustrative.) Strictly speaking, you made it 50 kilometers further. But if we're debating how effective this missile will be on the target, it got detected FAR away from impact and the enemy has plenty of time to vector interceptors. "Better" wasn't good enough.

What niche do you see it filling? It seems to me, we should rely on JDAM dropped by stealth or non-stealth platforms if the enemy doesn't have an IADS capable of shooting down TLAM, and we need a more blingy, expensive missile if they CAN shoot down TLAM. Perhaps this is a thread derailment, however.
 
Josh_TN said:
As to the forward swept wing “tomahawk”; that differs so radically from the Blk 4/5 it is hard to imagine it is in the same family.
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The picture is of low quality ...... I would resist calling it a Tomahawk ......
 
Josh_TN said:
As to the forward swept wing “tomahawk”; that differs so radically from the Blk 4/5 it is hard to imagine it is in the same family.
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It certainly seems to be a totally different member of the family from the Tactical Tomahawk, unless, as some have speculated it is the ultimate development of the Maritime Strike Tomahawk, which was at least originally partially derived from Tactical Tomahawk, Which is an interesting turn of the wheel in itself, given the origins of what would ultimately become the Block IV (ironically initially Block V *) program in the Arsenal Ship program back in the day.

Confusing matters further though is the fact that the Tactical Tomahawk moniker has seemingly in recent times been hung on in-development and proposed variants of the Tomahawk family that are not actually related to the Tactical Tomahawk, presumably at least in part to ease passage through both the Pentagon bureaucracy and Congress.

* The original Block IV program was almost totally separate from the Tactical Tomahawk effort and covered planned advanced developments such as the TMMM and the THTP:
In 1994, Hughes (now Raytheon) started to develop the Block IV upgrade, also known as TBIP (Tomahawk Baseline Improvement Program), which had the goal to develop a single all-purpose missile, the RGM/UGM-109E TMMM (Tomahawk Multi-Mode Missile) for use against ships and land targets. For this purpose an imaging seeker (either a FLIR or a mm-wave radar) was to be installed, so that the computer could be fed with images of either ships or land targets. Other options under consideration for Block IV were autonomous target acquisition by the seeker and a datalink for retargeting in flight. The planned warhead was the WDU-36/B of the TLAM-C Block III, but the latter's F107 engine was to be replaced by the much cheaper Teledyne CAE J402-CA-401 turbojet. The RGM/UGM-109H THTP (Tomahawk Hard Target Penetrator) was a proposed Block IV missile with a penetrating warhead. However, the TBIP proved to be too expensive, and was cancelled in May 1996. The program was eventually replaced by the Tactical Tomahawk (q.v. below). The "Block IV" label, as well as designations of the TBIP missiles (RGM/UGM-109E and RGM/UGM-109H) were also "transferred" to the Tactical Tomahawk program.
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Cirov said:
SAM sites can't see a terrain-hugging object very far out, but a surface radar is not the only sensor operated by a peer enemy. Networked airborne radar systems, which these days includes fighters, can pick out a low-altitude object from a much greater distance. Once a track is established, ground or air fires can be vectored--it might be shot down by radar-guided SAMs, or a training jet firing heatseekers. It isn't a particularly difficult target.

If the enemy is afraid to radiate because of active sensor denial, they will still be flying, floating, or mounting networks of passive sensors, depending on the terrain. The Ukrainians frequently get a track on Russian missiles while they're still in Russia, but they certainly pick them up once they cross the border and start flagging the tower-mounted acoustics. A peer enemy will certainly be doing the same.
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“Peer enemy” must mean “only China”, because no one has a large fleet of airborne early warning aircraft except China. Tomahawk may indeed be relatively easy to track and engage for that country, however it is worth noting the huge amount of resources that potentially requires give the range of the missile and the size of the country. As an anti ship weapon, tomahawk produces the same problems over water as well.

Acoustic sensor work as an early warning network but do not provide target tracks for weapon delivery. Ukraine’s system also is effective because Gerans are particularly loud and particularly slow, which gives the system lots of reaction time. Note also that Gerans are not terrain followers, at least not the vast majority, and makes their sound radiate fairly far and wide. A terrain following missile at high subsonic speeds is not going to be detected until it is practically over the sensor.

Terrain following is still an extremely effective way of hiding a weapon. Few countries have the resources to provide look down radars across wide areas, and in fact it could be argued there is exactly one.
 
Terrain following / sea skimming is in the first place a counter to ground based radars / sensors which are still the majority (primary) sensors in many cases
 
Grey Havoc said:
It certainly seems to be a totally different member of the family from the Tactical Tomahawk, unless, as some have speculated it is the ultimate development of the Maritime Strike Tomahawk, which was at least originally partially derived from Tactical Tomahawk, Which is an interesting turn of the wheel in itself, given the origins of what would ultimately become the Block IV (ironically initially Block V *) program in the Arsenal Ship program back in the day.
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Unless I'm mistaken MST is classified as a Block Va, with V representing the standard Block V and Vb the JMEWS warhead version.
 
Forest Green said:
Unless I'm mistaken MST is classified as a Block Va, with V representing the standard Block V and Vb the JMEWS warhead version.
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That is correct .....

The "Tactical Tomahawk" term was first used for the shortened air-launched Tomahawk variants (those able to be launched by tactical aircraft) back in the 1980's.... when that program was cancelled, "Tactical Tomahawk" was then re-used for the new Blk IV in the late 1990's, probably due to new features of its ability to loiter and re-target in-flight ...

The planned, cheaper turbojet engine was eventually replaced with a turbofan, which maintain its strategic range ....... so, along the way, "Tactical" becomes meaningless, and I think it was dropped from the Blk IV naming convention by the mid-2000's....
 
zjz said:
That is correct .....

The "Tactical Tomahawk" term was first used for the shortened air-launched Tomahawk variants (those able to be launched by tactical aircraft) back in the 1980's.... when that program was cancelled, "Tactical Tomahawk" was then re-used for the new Blk IV in the late 1990's, probably due to new features of its ability to loiter and re-target in-flight ...

The planned, cheaper turbojet engine was eventually replaced with a turbofan, which maintain its strategic range ....... so, along the way, "Tactical" becomes meaningless, and I think it was dropped from the Blk IV naming convention by the mid-2000's....
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We were still calling them "Tactical Tomahawks" in 04 and 05 (in the discussions around Ohio SSGNs).
 
kqcke for you said:
Terrain following / sea skimming is in the first place a counter to ground based radars / sensors which are still the majority (primary) sensors in many cases
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Not like it's ineffective against AWACS too. Depends on substrate, and key peer is notoriously mountainous and unevenly developed.
Which btw 100% applies to US as well.
 
Josh_TN said:
As to the forward swept wing “tomahawk”; that differs so radically from the Blk 4/5 it is hard to imagine it is in the same family.
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It looks a lot like a tomahawk to me. Wing sweep might have been added to adjust for a change in center of gravity.
 
CastleBravo said:
It looks a lot like a tomahawk to me. Wing sweep might have been added to adjust for a change in center of gravity.
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Well it’s long and cylindrical, but all of the control surfaces are wrong. Did anyone ever determine the the context of that picture or check for artifacts of alteration?
 
zjz said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/2028561411027107978
View: https://x.com/Archer83Able/status/2028561411027107978


You can see clearly the anti-jam GPS receiver name plate on one of the photos ....
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I did a quick search ... I am surprised there is not much info on the anti-jam used on the Blk IV and V ....


High Power RF Amplifier | Microwave & RF Amplifiers | Shinewave Microwave |Anti-Jamming Antenna

Global Supplier,Shinewave Microwave specializes in designing and manufacturing high-power RF & microwave amplifiers. Our amplifiers offer low noise, wide bandwidth, and high efficiency, ideal for communication, radar, and testing applications.Contact us today for a custom RF amplifier solution!
www.shinewave-tech.com
 
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Cirov said:
I'm not convinced that terrain-hugging is a meaningful advantage anymore. I mean, fifty years ago the B-1 was nearly canceled as a terrain-hugging bomber because airborne radar rendered that mission obsolete. A terrain-hugging aircraft is, strictly speaking, less detectable than the alternative; but if it can still be detected 50-100km away, does that make enough of a difference? Tomahawk will probably be detected en route to target by enemy air forces, or passively detected by an acoustic network, and a lot of them will be shot down by fighters using simple heat seekers.

And Tomahawk doesn't have a supersonic terminal dive, either, so attrition will be brutal once it engages enemy point defenses. Enemy gun and missile systems at the target will be extremely effective. All of this doesn't necessarily prevent a few leakers from getting through, but it means you need to fire 200+ TLAM to get an effect on target of 20 TLAM. That is blatantly unaffordable at the current price point, I'm in agreement with joshjosh.
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You think supersonic cruise missiles are cheaper? LMAO! They also have much shorter range (unless you want to go really expensive). Once the IADS are down they aren't shooting down anything.
 
zjz said:
I did a quick search ... I am surprised there is not much info on the anti-jam used on the Blk IV and V ....


High Power RF Amplifier | Microwave & RF Amplifiers | Shinewave Microwave |Anti-Jamming Antenna

Global Supplier,Shinewave Microwave specializes in designing and manufacturing high-power RF & microwave amplifiers. Our amplifiers offer low noise, wide bandwidth, and high efficiency, ideal for communication, radar, and testing applications.Contact us today for a custom RF amplifier solution!
www.shinewave-tech.com
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Search for AGR+GPS and you'll get plenty of results. It's an M-Code receiver. Technical details obviously are sensitive.
 
TomS said:
Search for AGR+GPS and you'll get plenty of results. It's an M-Code receiver. Technical details obviously are sensitive.
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Thanks for the tip.... I could not even find a decent photo of the modules online .... The thing that piqued my interest is the nameplate stating that the AGR weighs 23lb ......

Only thing I know is, it is made by Rockwell Collins under Raytheon .....
 
Forest Green said:
Did they fail, or just fragments collected after strike?
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Hard to tell .....

No matter the cause, any debris is an additional info to open source intel ..... one of the few ways to learn more about missile systems .....
 
Sferrin said:
You think supersonic cruise missiles are cheaper? LMAO! They also have much shorter range (unless you want to go really expensive). Once the IADS are down they aren't shooting down anything.
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This is needlessly aggressive.

I said "supersonic terminal stage" and I did not imply it would be a cheaper missile. A supersonic terminal dive onto target would burn more fuel, but not by much--the cruise would still be subsonic and fuel efficient, while the terminal approach would speed up to complicate missile defense. This is a known technique in anti ship missiles, I don't see why it couldn't apply to cruise missiles.

My reference to price was purely in terms of price per effect. A more capable missile will generally be more expensive, but what matters is the ratio of increased cost to increased performance. If a defended target could expect to intercept 80% of a TLAM strike but only 50% of a PrSM strike, then the PrSM strike is quite obviously much cheaper per effect despite the missiles being roughly comparable in price.

If the IADS is down and they aren't shooting anything, I don't see much point in using cruise missiles anymore. JDAM will always be cheaper and therefore more available. The accountants don't run the military during a war, but availability will be a serious concern. JDAM stockpiles and replenishment rates are far superior to TLAM, which means more frequent and harder hitting missions.
 
Cirov said:
If the IADS is down and they aren't shooting anything, I don't see much point in using cruise missiles anymore.
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Easier to have a Tomahawk carry the hurt to a target a thousand miles away than to have a fighter do it.
 
How? If risk is negligible and planes are right there anyway, flight of a fighter plus two in air refuelings cost something like several tens of thousands of dollars. Plus a bomb, at most a 100 thousand. probably less.
 
totoro said:
How? If risk is negligible and planes are right there anyway, flight of a fighter plus two in air refuelings cost something like several tens of thousands of dollars. Plus a bomb, at most a 100 thousand. probably less.
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Less than $100k for a fighter, tanker, fuel, and the bomb? Not to mention what it subtracts from your ability to use those assets elsewhere. Planes aren't "right there" and you likely have way more targets than planes anyway. Time is still of essence. Also, IADS isn't on or off. It can still be dangerous enough that you wouldn't want to send a plane where you'd send a Tomahawk.
 
Sferrin said:
Easier to have a Tomahawk carry the hurt to a target a thousand miles away than to have a fighter do it.
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Maybe if you quoted the whole statement, it would make more sense.

If you need a single effector on a single target and enemy air defense is negligible, then sure, 2 TLAM is perfect. That isn't what I denied, though.

If you need many effects on target, something like 30-40 TLAM, then it is vastly cheaper to run a B-1B full of JDAM to target. Also easy to shoot down, but the enemy IADS in this scenario is down. If their IADS is not degraded, then we're talking about a different scenario.

Sferrin said:
Less than $100k for a fighter, tanker, fuel, and the bomb? Not to mention what it subtracts from your ability to use those assets elsewhere. Planes aren't "right there" and you likely have way more targets than planes anyway. Time is still of essence. Also, IADS isn't on or off. It can still be dangerous enough that you wouldn't want to send a plane where you'd send a Tomahawk.
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What scenario are we even talking about? You seem to be throwing everything at the wall at once. IADS is too degraded to shoot down Tomahawk, IADS is fine; the enemy has a huge number of targets, the enemy only needs to be serviced by a single missile. Is this a tactical problem where the slow responsiveness of a bomber or multirole fighter is a handicap, or is the Tomahawk flying from the very edge of its range? Pick a lane and we can actually discuss the relative usefulness of TLAM and other systems.
 

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