US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter tphuang
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It looks like the Mako is rocket powered and if so how does it reach hypersonic speeds while being small enough to fit into an F-35 weapons bay?
While Lockheed Martin received several contracts over the years from the SiAW programs, , Northrop Grumman ultimately won the program in a $705 million contract last year. It should be noted that Northrop Grumman’s submission is reportedly based on their work with the Navy’s Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile – Extended Range (AARGM-ER) program. Given this baseline, SiAW is expected to reach out to at least 300-350 kilometers.
This is Lockheed trying to recycle the R&D efforts they put into competing with and losing to Northrop. Given Northrop managed to achieve 300-350 km, at least on paper, my guess is Lockheed failed on range and Mako would be a very short ranged weapon.
It also appears that this was spun off from being originally an internal Lockheed-only effort to now being a collaboration between a startup and Lockheed. I believe they are setting up a scapegoat (CoAspire) to deflect any potential dissatisfaction with the final product. Let's not forget that so far all the demonstrations and fit testing have been using prototypes, so there's always the risk that the final production model will have unacceptably high defect rates or lower-than-advertised performance. At least Boeing has no involvement, so that's something weighing in its favor.
They talk about mach 5 speed but I don't know if it will be at that speed at 300km+ range... Still better than AGM-88G 300 km/ Mach 2.9.
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300km+ range is for the winning prototype by Northrop. The competing Lockheed prototype (Mako) is clearly inferior to the Northrop version. By how much? Who knows.
Maybe mach 5 is just the on-paper theoretical max velocity for if the Mako could continue flying well past its designed range.
Yeah, it's certainly strange in terms of speed a range. Given that they lost the competition to Northrop I am guessing we'll probably never know as this likely won't be adopted by anyone. Especially if the US isn't interested.
Boeing has a model of the MQ-25 with AGM-158C Long-Range Anti-Surface Missiles on display at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space exposition. This isn't really surprising and I am sure at some point in the future the drone will be outfitted with some strike capability.
How they overhaul and maintain M1 Abrams tanks at Anniston Army Depot and Red River Army Depot. Impressive how modern the process looks.
