Vought JTACMS/ATACMS (MGM-140)

NMaude said:
Well the US needs to stop self-deterring and send them to Ukraine as they will make a big difference, apparently the Ukrainians have already destroyed three SA-21 Growler batteries in the Luhansk region with regular ATACMS rounds.
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The regular ones are the best for the task. The longer ranged ATACMs either have fewer bomblets or unitary warheads.
 
NMaude said:
Well the US needs to stop self-deterring and send them to Ukraine as they will make a big difference, apparently the Ukrainians have already destroyed three SA-21 Growler batteries in the Luhansk region with regular ATACMS rounds.
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Source on three S400 batteries destroyed?
 
Seems odd that the S400 wasn't able to intercept some ATACMS in a ballistic flight path. Unless the Ukrainians salvo launched enough missiles that the S400 got swamped?
 
Scott Kenny said:
Seems odd that the S400 wasn't able to intercept some ATACMS in a ballistic flight path. Unless the Ukrainians salvo launched enough missiles that the S400 got swamped?
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These strikes against air defense sites never occur in vacuum. From what I’ve read there are usually supporting HARM and MALDs launched at the same time, and in the case of ATACMs possibly some HIMARS strikes to give the local AD some other ballistics tracks to shoot at. Though also presumably multiple ATACMs were used from at least a couple different directions as well.
 
NMaude said:
January? These 186 mile range variants need to be sent ASAP!
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I am guessing that the HIMARS that were supplied to Ukraine had some of the bells and whistles removed and that is part of the delay. The oldest versions of ATACMs don't even use GPS, where as the smaller warhead versions (both cluster and unitary) do.
 
Theres pictures of an ATACM boost section with the serial number that says its a 27 year old model.

Biggest issues with solid fuel rockets like these are the motor cracking from thermal cycling in storage. While they are design to withstand some cracking, after 20 years it usually surpasses the design limits.

But there are ways to check the motors, using basic ultrasound to scan it. But it usually not consider worth it to do so after 20 years. Especially since the number of people able to do it is limited to basically the companies Quality Control Checkers and a handful of government payed checkers.

But scanning then giving the good ones to give to Ukraine is cheaper then safely trashing them.


As for why the S300 was unable to stop it?

Fairly simple, by the time the Radar picks it up it starting to point down. And by the time the radar calculates everything, tell the operators, they get permission to fire, follow by the system interception calculations with the Missile travel time?

Well the ATACMs had already start spinning for firing off its submunitions.

By the time the S300 missile hits the Atacm it too late.

The 300 to 900 bomblets have been release and on its way.

Which are too small to be detected and too many to even think of intercepting even if you could see them.

Even the AEGIS or Patriot will have issues, and that things ABM mode is wholy automatic unlike the S300s that needs the operators ok to even think of firing.

You Basically have to kill a Cluster ATACMS before it fires its submunitions otherwise dont bother, just going to hit the spent motor.


And 1 cluster atacms of either model covers a nearly 400 meters in diameter circle in a 1.5 to 3 pound high explosive tungsten shrapnel cover bomblets. Even mbts will have their face mauled, to say nothing of the unarmor vehicle.

There a reason why these system got the nicknames of Steel Rain, Grid Square Killer /Eraser, and the commanders shotgun.

And the S300 or S400 installation spread out over a 100 meter area max?

Edit: Also needs to be remembered that one of the OG design targets the ATACMs was made to take out?

Was the S300s.

So this is it literally showing off what it was design to do.
 
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Firefinder said:
Theres pictures of an ATACM boost section with the serial number that says its a 27 year old model.

Biggest issues with solid fuel rockets like these are the motor cracking from thermal cycling in storage. While they are design to withstand some cracking, after 20 years it usually surpasses the design limits.

But there are ways to check the motors, using basic ultrasound to scan it. But it usually not consider worth it to do so after 20 years. Especially since the number of people able to do it is limited to basically the companies Quality Control Checkers and a handful of government payed checkers.

But scanning then giving the good ones to give to Ukraine is cheaper then safely trashing them.
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Don't forget that you have to unpack (and repack the usable ones!) each missile too. It's quite a lot of work to check a sizable amount of missiles, and not all of them will be in a good state. I can imagine that the leadup to Ukraine getting a workable amount took several months.
This has been in the works for a while.
 
NMaude said:
Wouldn't the oldest ones have long been expended in combat, live fire exercises or have been de-milled?
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The US stopped fielding the cluster warhead missiles and stuck them in storage. They weren't expended or scrapped because the Army was paying to remanufacture them into unitary warhead missiles. Not all of them, luckily for Ukraine, and now that PrSM is coming online that effort's redundant.
 
Moose said:
Not all of them, luckily for Ukraine,
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Very fortunate for Ukraine.

Moose said:
now that PrSM is coming online that effort's redundant.
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I strongly suspect that the US DoD is quietly behind the scenes trying to accelerate that schedule to get the LRIP PrSM units into service in order to free up ATACMS units so that they can be sent to Ukraine.
 
NMaude said:
Wouldn't the oldest ones have long been expended in combat, live fire exercises or have been de-milled?
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Apparently not; reportedly the version used is the block I. Something like 1500 were made, with only a few hundred expended, but I had assumed all that weren’t used up were refurbished into unitary models. Apparently not. The shorter range and lack of GPS is somewhat compensated for by a larger warhead of cluster munitions, 950 in all. Latter GPS guided models have ~300 munitions or a harpoon warhead but nearly double range.
 
I'm wondering, if the US DoD was so inclined could the ATACMS production line be reopened? And if so how long would it take and at what cost?
 
NMaude said:
I'm wondering, if the US DoD was so inclined could the ATACMS production line be reopened? And if so how long would it take and at what cost?
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Probably not, and what would be the point with PrSM entering production? The only advantage of ATACMs is larger warhead, and the PrSM makes up for that with superior fragmentation and two per pod.
 
To bring this thread back to JTACMS
On Ebay someone is offering US Army Missile Command Prints, including one of JTACMS target acquisition concepts.
The most interesting aspect imo is what looks like a OTH Skywave radar for target acquisition beyond 300km.
 

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Voltzz said:
To bring this thread back to JTACMS
On Ebay someone is offering US Army Missile Command Prints, including one of JTACMS target acquisition concepts.
The most interesting aspect imo is what looks like a OTH Skywave radar for target acquisition beyond 300km.
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So OTH (Over The Horizon) SAR?
 
I don't think they mean a OTH radar. I think this would be a OTH communication link to an own site 300 km away. They all are communicating. The target is 60 km behind FLOT and is viewed by the drone and the aircraft. Both are communicating to the station and to the satellite and the ground control station to a site far away.
 
xena said:
I don't think they mean a OTH radar. I think this would be a OTH communication link to an own site 300 km away. They all are communicating. The target is 60 km behind FLOT and is viewed by the drone and the aircraft. Both are communicating to the station and to the satellite and the ground control station to a site far away.
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That isn't what the picture seems to show though.
 
xena said:
I don't think they mean a OTH radar. I think this would be a OTH communication link to an own site 300 km away. They all are communicating. The target is 60 km behind FLOT and is viewed by the drone and the aircraft. Both are communicating to the station and to the satellite and the ground control station to a site far away.
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You could be correct, but im not convinced:
A parabolic antrenna as the OTH emitter fits the communication link better than the radar, but that could just be artistic licence.
Consider that the "own site" would be on the wrong side of the FLOT. And its position is not just an artifact of the artistic depiction, it is assigned an explicit distance beyond the FLOT. That implies that it is a target.
Additionaly the artist depicted communication links as lightning bolts in all other cases: Satellite to UAV, UAV to station, aircraft to station. The sensor footprints of the UAV and the aircraft meanwhile are depicted as shaded areas between two lines. As is the OTH emission.
Forest Green said:
So OTH (Over The Horizon) SAR?
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OTH SAR would be very difficult considering the size of OTH radars. Inverse SAR (ISAR) using the targets movement could maybe be possible, but i have never heard of it used in OTH applications. I imagine an OTH radar fo use with JTACMS would just use moving target indication (MTI)
 
Voltzz said:
OTH SAR would be very difficult considering the size of OTH radars. Inverse SAR (ISAR) using the targets movement could maybe be possible, but i have never heard of it used in OTH applications. I imagine an OTH radar fo use with JTACMS would just use moving target indication (MTI)
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That was my impression too. SAR tends to need small wavelengths, which don't bounce off the atmosphere. The picture is probably misleading.
 
There was an attempt to use a Toposphere backscatter comm array as a OTH radar by the army back in the late 70s early 80s. By using that effect with modern signal processing. Remember hearing bout during my time in the school house during training a decade ago.

Nothing came of it and I never found out anything bout in my searchs at the time. Likely cause it was an odject failure. But it wouldnt be the first time the DOD mess with somethign that had no hope of working.
 
Firefinder said:
There was an attempt to use a Toposphere backscatter comm array as a OTH radar by the army back in the late 70s early 80s. By using that effect with modern signal processing. Remember hearing bout during my time in the school house during training a decade ago.

Nothing came of it and I never found out anything bout in my searchs at the time. Likely cause it was an odject failure. But it wouldnt be the first time the DOD mess with somethign that had no hope of working.
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It's been my experience that when the DoD does something like that, it's an idea backed by a politician that won't shut up about it till they get it proved unworkable.
 
Forest Green said:
That was my impression too. SAR tends to need small wavelengths, which don't bounce off the atmosphere. The picture is probably misleading.
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Sorry, maybe i am missing something, but this confuses me. What gave you the (misleading) impression that its depicting SAR?
 
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aonestudio said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1780561156479856931
View: https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1780561156479856931
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Hang on...wasn't S-400 supposed to be far superior to Patriot??

It's almost like decades of combat use, multi billion investment and development and sustained, realistic testing actually count for something...

You'll be telling me next that the fact that more Amraam have been fired in tests than AA-12/R-77 have been built might actually count for something...
 
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timmymagic said:
Hang on...wasn't S-400 supposed to be far superior to Patriot??
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According to Russian overhype but events in the last two years in Ukraine have proved otherwise.

timmymagic said:
It's almost like decades of combat use, multi billion investment and development and sustained, realistic testing actually count for something...
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To be truly effective the SA-21 Growler battery has to be thoroughly integrated with the local air-defence network which includes SAM batteries of different type plus also having a properly trained, competent crew to operate it.

timmymagic said:
than AA-10/R-77 have been built
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You're conflating two different missiles - the much older AA-10 Alamo (R-27) and AA-12 Adder (R-77).
 

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