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JDAM’s from hell In a recent Boeing and USAF test, a B2 bomber dropped 80 bombs in 22 seconds… and hit 80 different targets. They call it revolutionary. I call it awesome to the point of being scary.
Perhaps in a future war we’ll only need two very large bombers. One as a backup for maintenance downtime… and the other to make a single war-ending zig-zag pass over enemy territory.
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Not even 2 very large bombers…. give it another year or two and the bombs will become miniaturised with their own little wings, arms and legs and they’ll fly hop and run, skip and climb – and swarm right to you! 😛
Yeah, but if we go that far we’ll need weapon psychologists to put them in the right mood. “Not today, I have a headache” won’t do at all.
Ah, but what they failed to mention was that it was only aiming at *one* target 😉
Or should that be “scary to the point of being awesome”? I think it reached “scary” some time ago, actually, at least it did if you are one of the people being bombed.
Forget that.
Think of a B-52 outfitted to carry 250lb or smaller bombs with glide fins.
A B-52 could carry a literal boat-load of those (forget 80 bombs, try 100’s), and time-on-target barrage whole grid areas with a bomb every x-yards.
Or you could wallop a tough target, like a bridge, bunker, every 5 secs until you get bored or it goes away.
Really puts a premium on
A. Air dominance (forget superiority, you NEVER want to anyone with a “bomb freighter” even close to your positions. Losing control for even minutes could mean everyone’s dead or pounded useless.)
B. Armour if you must be in the neighbourhood of a hit, there’s nothing that improves your odds like some inches of insurance.
C. Mobility. It’s a lot harder to hit you if you are moving or have moved away fromthe target area.
Fred, appalled.
1.How many of these toys do you get for the price of one atomic submatine ?
2. Next step would be for the JDAMs to be capable not only of hitting a target, but also of FINDING it. We let them loose, and they home in on the terrorists.
Now for our next trick, put them on flying dump trucks that don’t cost billions per copy. If you have air dominance then you don’t *need* a B2
JDAM kits use GPS.
So they need to be programmed CORRECTLY.
Remember the Chinese Embassy “incident”, these sorts of technology just magnify your ability to make mistakes.
Technology is just a lever, you have to be very very careful who and how you enter the targets, as most people can’t even program a video recorder!
Interesting.
The next generation of JDAMS are being designed with extended wing-foils for greater independent range. Something on the order of 70 – 120 kilometers after getting dropped from a bomber. Then there’s a rumor I’ve heard where the USAF is thinking of test refitting a couple C-130 or C-5 transports to drop these JDAMS out the back. Basically the bombs would be rolled out the back of the aircraft, the palletised packaging would release the bombs and then the bombs would glide on their merry way to their targets.
Another interesting concept I’ve run across is the possible use of an electromagnetic rail gun or coil gun that would do a sub-orbital launch of a JDAM bomb from within the continental USA. The launcher would use helium cooled superconductors and have a length of around 10 miles. The JDAMS would reach near sub-orbital in their trajectory. Once back in the atmosphere the wings would pop out and the guidance package would take over.
Which I consider the most efficient of all. Why bother flying a bomber 35+ hours to drop a single payload when you can just chuck the silly things all day, and night, long right from Florida. If you add the concept of “platooning”, whereby multiple rounds are in varying stages of acceleration within the launcher, then truly ridiculously high rates of fire would be easily possible.
Technology is a fun thing.
ed
Yeah, it’s scary, but it’s a lot less scary than dropping 800 dumb bombs just so there’s a chance 80 hit their targets.
Or from gas guns on which someone I know worked. And for which I’ve a good guess on at least one potential location.
But I ain’t tellin’ 🙂
One of USAF’s eventual goal is to have a fleet of hypersonic bombers capable of hitting anywhere on Earth within 3 hours from Nebraska. Thie bomber is a sub-orbital vehicle that basically eschew air space overflight permission.
This is to reduce the reliance on forward Air Force bases that depended on the fickle mood of those base’s host nation (like the Saudi).
Why not load a cruise missile with a few JDAMs? Why use any piloted aircraft as a bombing platform at all?
Beautiful though it is, the B2 is an expensive, unnecessary toy. From Den Beste :
Some have proposed that the Air Force should augment its heavy bombers by purchasing what is half-facetiously referred to as “B-767’s”. (Jim Dunnigan is a big fan of this concept.) The idea would be to contract with Boeing to create a militarized bomber version of the 767, with a huge bomb bay and such essential structural changes as that would require but otherwise little different from the civilian 767. They’d be relatively cheap, have a huge carrying capacity (on the order of 4 times what a B1 can carry), fly long distances without refueling, be extremely reliable, and wouldn’t be even faintly “stealthy”. They might carry flares and ECM, but aside from that there’d be no defenses.
They could probably be acquired for about $80 million each, as opposed to about $200 million for the B-1 and a stunning $2.1 billion each for the B-2.
It is astounding to realize that the acquisition cost of two B-2’s exceeds the cost of one Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. For the cost of one B-2 we can purchase more than 4,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles. No plane is worth that much money; I don’t care what it can do. Whatever it is, we can’t afford it.
Link here.
> Perhaps in a future war we’ll only need two very
> large bombers. One as a backup for
> maintenance downtime… and the other to make
> a single war-ending zig-zag pass over enemy
> territory.
Dale — the soaring *cost* of these systems is even more mind-boggling. Are you familiar with “Calvin Coolidge’s Revenge?” The former US President suggested in 1917 that the Army and Navy simply buy a single military aircraft and take turns flying it! Former Lockheed-Martin CEO Norm Augustine has plotted the unit cost of U.S. military aircraft vs. the total military budget, concluding the curves will intersect in the year 2050! Already, the U.S. only operates a fleet of fifteen B2s.
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Now, do you think any of this will make it easier for freedom-loving libertarians to build low-cost reusable space vehicles? I doubt it…many people argue the strength of the military-industrial complex is a major reason why entrepreneurial innovators cannot compete in the aerospace business.
MARCU$
src=http://www.abo.fi/~mlindroo/armagddn/Asccost.gif
“Yeah, it’s scary, but it’s a lot less scary than dropping 800 dumb bombs just so there’s a chance 80 hit their targets.”
Yep completley agree less scary than a army of B17 or Lancasters dropping dumb bombs after dumb bumbs.
but like Rob read said they are controlled by GPS and Inertial navigation in backup.
They are just dumb bombs with a JDAM kit in back much less expensive than laser and electro optical guidance kits. PRO : cost, many can be released at same time, almost unaffected by weather.
Cons: cannot be released to moving targets, must be programmed(improvements are making this easier), less precision than a laser or EO bomb.
Ah Marcus… you caught me out. The Augustine quote was precisely what was written between the lines…
No, the libertarian approach would be more similar to the suggestion above for buying some commercial 767’s. Some of the weapons systems are approaching dinosaur status in my opinion…
As an example that I’m sure fellow editor Perry could elaborate on… the WWII US Sherman tanks beat the German Tiger tanks. The “Ronsen” (lights first time everytime) tanks inferior in almost every way but one. The US could turn them out by the score. 4 Shermans could take out a Tiger for a loss of 3 Shermans… but the Tiger could not be easily replaced.
Likewise, the B2 is a great system if you expect zero losses and will get 30-40 good years out of them. But then, look at the B52. It’s expected to see its 70th birthday while still in front line service. Now that, my friends, is value for money.
Strange, I got all tingly when I read about the test.
Can’t wait to see it in action! Er…perhaps that’s not the right thing to say. Maybe “Well, I’m glad as hell it’s on OUR side!” would be slightly more PC. Still not very PC though. Must try harder. 😉
I apologize for the rambling nature of these thoughts.
Another big advantage the Sherman had over the Tiger was maintainability. In the 4 on 1 matchup above, the Tiger couldn’t even be counted on showing up for battle.
The same comparison can be applied to the B-52/B-767 vs. B-2, or JDAM vs LGB. The B-2 has a huge maintainence cost. It also requires special hangars, which limit its usefulness.
The US military is reaching the point where broad technological improvement has diminishing return. In one Iraq engagement, most of the tank kills were by a Bradley. The Abrams was generally overkill.
That said, there is some merit in having at least a few of the high-end machines. If we only had the Bradleys and B-52s, other nations could aim for having a military good enough to stop them. Because we’ve also got the Abrams and B-2s, there’s a lot less incentive to try to stop the others. Even if they do spend the fortune required to stop the Bradleys and B-52s, we’ve got the ability to overpower whatever they’ve got.
If there are 80 bombs on a B-52, they’re 250 lbs each. The B-52 only has a payload of about 20,000 lbs. That’s part of the motivation for the B-767 with its 80,000 lb payload. That’s probably also why they’re looking at modified C-130s and C-5As.
The “B-767” is a dead loser of an idea. It will never fly. Take it over to rec.aviation.military for the rundown.
No BONEs about it:
“B-52 — Someone over thirty you can trust.”
All hail the mighty Strat.
I am completely ignorant regarding the subject matter, but I am curious; what are the nuclear implications, in the strategic sense, of a rail gun as described above? Would a launch of this sort be harder to detect than one utilizing an ICBM, given the smaller size and lack of signature from burning fuel? Would this narrow the time for response from 20 minutes or so to something much shorter? Of course, an ICBM-equipped sub has already had the potential to shorten response time, so perhaps it doesn’t change things very much.
I agree with Kresh. I’d love to see it in action against enemy targets. On the other hand, the thought of what those bombs are doing to humans makes this desire (to see in action) seem horrid.
Forgot to mention that one of my first thoughts, after, “Wow, cool.” was, “I’m going to be paying a lot of money for that.”.
I know what you’re thinking, punk. You’re thinking, did he fire 80 shots or only 79? Well to tell you the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement. But being as this is a B2 Spirit, the most powerful heavy bomber in the world and will blow your town clean back to the Pleistocene Age, you’ve got to ask yourself a question: do I feel lucky? Well do ya, punk?
Dale wrote:
> As an example that I’m sure fellow editor Perry
> could elaborate on… the WWII US Sherman
> tanks beat the German Tiger tanks.
> The “Ronsen” (lights first time everytime) tanks
> inferior in almost every way but one. The US
> could turn them out by the score. 4 Shermans
> could take out a Tiger for a loss of 3 Shermans…
> but the Tiger could not be easily replaced.
The argument for buying modern fighter aircraft other than the F-22 is roughly similar. E.g., I hear the Raptor is much better than the JAS-39 Gripen or Joint Strike Fighter, but it’s not ten times better so it might actually represent better value for money. Can anybody confirm or deny?
> this is a B2 Spirit, the most powerful heavy
> bomber in the world and will blow your town
> clean back to the Pleistocene Age, you’ve got to
> ask yourself a question: do I feel lucky?
A bomber costing half a billion per copy, and yet it would have been useless against Mohammed Atta…
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I think the “Islamofascists” have found the perfect weapon against “the unprecedented might of the United States” and it doesn’t matter if the DoD budget is increased to one trillion dollars. Removing a few Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan won’t be enough. The *only* form of countermeasures that will work, is technology that allows the American government to track and monitor (in Big Brother fashion) individual terrorists in U.S. controlled areas before they strike. Just what civil libertarians want, right?
MARCU$
About Coolidge’s revenge — that aircraft are getting so expensive that the entire Defense budget will buy only one plane and the Air Force and Navy and Marines will take turns.
There was this cheesy Clint Eastwood movie called Fire Fox where the Russians had this super-capable Mach 5 aircraft called, of course, Fire Fox. Apparently the Russians had only one Fire Fox, so it made sense to send Clint Eastwood out to steal that one aircraft. Actually, the Russians had a second Fire Fox so they could chase Clint Eastwood in the first Fire Fox, making the film more interesting.
The idea that anyone has only two of a very capable aircraft as a version of Coolidge’s Revenge probably didn’t enter the minds of the script writers.
A bomber costing half a billion per copy, and yet it would have been useless against Mohammed Atta…
Different weapons for different situations.
An interesting statement, but I think completely wrong. The truth is that a handful of ordinary citizens came up with an effective defense, and it took them less than two hours from the first of the September 11 attacks.
Remember Flight 93?
The primary reason for a railgun launched JDAM is, IMHO, cost. The operational and purchase costs of many weapons & delivery systems is pretty high. So I’d expect a large-scale railgun, along with the suborbital JDAMS, would be relatively inexpensive. Additionally you wouldn’t have to worry about losing pilots or aircraft. And I’d imagine that shooting sub-orbital JDAMS down with air defense missiles would be a seriously money losing situation as each missile would be far more expensive than any single JDAM.
Hmm. You might be able to win a war simply by chucking JDAMS at people and forcing them into bankruptcy from trying to shoot all of them. 🙂 Just joking.
As for the nuclear aspects. I believe a large portion of the nuclear detection is based on launch signatures of missiles detected by satellites. A sub-orbital JDAM shouldn’t have much of a launch signature, the only signature really would be heating from friction due to the high velocity. It might have a high reentry signature due to the velocity but small (100lb) JDAMS would look awfully like a satellite reentry at worst. You could probably detect them with radar if they have a metal casing, but the military is experimenting with non-fragmentation cases to reduce the danger of collateral damage.
I expect that a JDAM with a ceramic casing would be very hard to detect with radar. Additionally it might be possible to dispense with an explosive payload altogether. If you can crank the velocity up high enough the sheer kinetic force itself would probably be sufficient.
*shrug* interesting concepts but I have no idea about the engineering involved.
ed
>> I think the “Islamofascists” have found the
>> perfect weapon against “the unprecedented
>> might of the United States” and it doesn’t
>> matter if the DoD budget is increased to one
>> trillion dollars…. The *only* form of
>> countermeasures that will work, is technology
>> that allows the American government to track
>> and monitor (in Big Brother fashion) individual
>> terrorists in U.S. controlled areas before they
>> strike.
> An interesting statement, but I think completely
> wrong. The truth is that a handful of ordinary
> citizens came up with an effective defense,
Only because the “ordinary citizens” *knew* what the terrorists were planning to do! Besides, the attack was successful in the sense that the hijacked plane was totally destroyed along with its passengers.
—
You have to find a way to prevent the terrorists from striking in the first place, e.g. by increased government surveillance at the U.S. border and at airports. It has clearly gotten significantly harder for Al Qaeda & co. to do harm following the tightening-up of homeland security following 9-11. But the tricky part is the terrorists pick the time, method and place to strike next.
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If 9-11 (and the Oklahoma City bombing for that matter) is any indication, a small but determined group of individuals can kill hundreds or even thousands of people by spending only a fraction of a million dollars on preparation. That is why I believe the United States government will never win “The War on Terror” — any more than it has won “The War on Drugs”.
MARCU$
But Marcus, the hijackers’ object wasn’t to destroy the aircraft — it was to destroy a target in Washington. Flight 93 wasn’t turned into a weapon — and I suspect that terrorists have now been deprived of that sort of weapon forever, at least as far as the U.S. goes. And now that we’ve been warned… let me put it this way: I’m in the process of getting my concealed-carry permit for this very reason, and I’m far from alone.
You are of course right that all terrorist activity cannot be prevented. But the large-scale activity (like September 11) requires large-scale organization and resources beyond those of the average crank; it requires support of governments and quasi-governments, and those are precisely what the WOT is directed at — not against the average cranks.
The War on (some) Drugs is a different matter entirely; your analogy there fails on so many fronts that I don’t know where to begin criticizing it.
Please consider what an American C-17 with a roll-on roll-off bomb rack and palletized command data link cargo container could do once the USAF has air superiority.
Will Allen: Would a [rail gun] launch … be harder to detect than one utilizing an ICBM, given the smaller size and lack of signature from burning fuel?
[speculation]
There are at least two distinct issues: detecting the existence of a launch and tracking the projectile.
I’m guessing that in some ways the rail gun launch would be easier than an ICBM to detect. To reliably detect a missile launch (lots of IR and smoke) you need a network of orbiting satellites, which few nations can afford. A rail gun launch would presumably be accompanied by a large low-frequency EM pulse, which might be detectable by one far cheaper ground-based radio detector.
Tracking where the JDAM is headed, that’s much harder. And shooting it down, as Ed comments, would be very difficult, largely due to (1) its small size and (2) its completely passive nature with minimal emissions, merely receiving GPS broadcasts.
[/speculation]
Chris Josephson: the thought of what those bombs are doing to humans makes this desire (to see in action) seem horrid.
I dunno, Chris, it depends on the humans.
I cheered when I read a recent account of an air strike on some Baathists who were executing surrendering Iraqi troops: one 750# bomb and the white-robed lunatics simply vanished, along with their vehicles. The hand of god, indeed.
BTW, anyone got good links for the rail gun JDAM? I think it sounds like a pretty cool idea. I can just hear the orders: “Open fire, planetary artillery!” 🙂
> I suspect that terrorists have now been deprived
> of that sort of weapon forever, at least as far as
> the U.S. goes.
Indeed, but my point was that deranged creative minds will find new ways the government hasn’t considered yet. And they *will* have more and more firepower at their disposal, if the current rate of technological progress continues.
> But the large-scale activity (like September 11)
> requires large-scale organization and resources
> beyond those of the average crank; it requires
> support of governments and quasi-governments,
I don’t think so. It seems Bin Laden spent about $0.1 million of his own fortune on this and the hijackers learned very few of the skills required for the job at the Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
—
I am saying criminal organizations such as the Mafia would be perfectly capable of launching attacks on a similar scale as Oklahoma City and 9-11, if they saw a need for it. Al Qaeda never had any strong government ties to begin with (Bin Laden essentially dances to his own tune), and it (as well as other Arab terrorist organizations) will undoubtedly increasingly try to obtain financing via criminal activities and private donations in the future. There is no lack of motivation either, since these guys are driven by suicidal religious fanaticism and feel they are continuing a struggle that has been going on for a thousand years. The claim that you can win by “destroying their support infrastructure” (supposedly Arab governments and some organizations) is very naive. The best you can hope for is to contain the problem through increased homeland security, which unfortunately involves violating the civil liberties of Arabs living in America and Europe. I don’t like Ashcroft and Guantanamo Bay, but I grudgingly accept the need for it.
This is why I believe the United States government will never win “The War on Terrorism”. Maybe the war on drugs was a poor analogy — it’s more like a war on organized crime. We have never been able to destroy the Mafia, either.
MARCU$
Some rough calculations to back up my speculations:
Assume a 500kg projectile accelerated to orbital speed over 16km.
–> 3.4GW average power input to projectile.
Say an equal amount is radiated; then we’re looking at a 4 sec EM burst at ~4kHz with average power of 3GW. (I have no idea of the radiative efficiency of a rail gun; but even assuming a generous 90% efficiency plus shielding that’s 99% effective, we still radiate 3MW.)
That’s a pretty distinctive “bang,” easily heard ’round the world.
But again, hearing the “bang” and knowing where the bullet will hit are two very, VERY different challenges. I think it’s more a case of “everyone just heard the bang, now we have 30 minutes to evacuate every likely target.” And stopping the bullet? Fuggedaboudit.
Actually much easier than that. You only need a suborbital trajectory that intersects the Earth at the target point. Much lower velocity requirement means lower initial mv^2; it also makes the re-entry problem much more tractable.
That’s why all the X-Prize people are going for suborbital to start with. It’s a far simpler engineering problem.
Dale Amon: Actually much easier than that. You only need a suborbital trajectory that intersects the Earth at the target point. Much lower velocity requirement means lower initial mv^2; it also makes the re-entry problem much more tractable.
Dale, was your comment in reply to mine?
If so, I don’t understand your point about the benefits of sub-orbital flight.
(1) If the rail gun is to have global reach, i.e. to hit targets up to 20,000km away, then even with no atmosphere it would still have to be capable of firing at almost-orbital speed. (I hand-wave the delta(v^2)/v^2 to be only about 6%.)
(2) Either the rail gun has a fairly flat trajectory or not. If flat, then the projectile spends a lot of its flight in the atmosphere, and the rail gun must provide enough extra KE to overcome frictional losses. If not flat, then we’re looking like a rocket again and we’ll still have to deal with re-entry. And besides, why would entering the atmosphere at 8km/s be any less painful than leaving it at 8km/s? 🙂
Perhaps I miss your point, but I don’t see that the admittedly suborbital nature of the flight really saves us that much energy. In fact, now I’m more spooked by atmospheric friction.
Best Regards, Gomtu