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The new JSOW C-1 will allow fighter jets to track and destroy moving targets at sea

The Navy will soon deploy a new air-launched, precision-guided weapon able to use a two-way data-link to identify and destroy moving targets at sea, a technology, giving fighters such as the F/A-18 Super Hornet a vastly increased attack envelope against a wider range of threats.

Called the AMG-154 Joint Standoff Weapon, or JSOW, the Raytheon-built attack bomb uses GPS technology, inertial measurement unit guidance technology and an imaging infrared seeker in the final phase of flight to find and attack enemy targets.

While historically used as a land-attack weapon launched from air-platforms such as fighter jets, new technology allows the JSOW weapon to use the LINK 16 data-link to identify and kill moving maritime targets at sea from ranges as far at 70-miles, Navy officials told Scout Warrior.

“The JSOW C-1 Moving Maritime Target capability allows the weapon to fly to an updated cue from its controlling platform, then transition to an image recognition/matching process enabled by an onboard database of ship characteristics stored in the weapon (database selected in mission planning or in the cockpit),” Navy spokeswoman Lt. Amber Lynn.

The existing variant, called the JSOW C, is now being upgraded to include the new variant called the JSOW C-1.

The new JSOW C-1 combines the proven, precision, standoff land attack capabilities from JSOW C, with the new, state-of-the-art Link 16 data link to also engage moving maritime targets.

The JSOW C-1 is the only variant currently in production, and is an upgrade to the JSOW C Unitary variant which uses an autonomous Imaging Infrared seeker with Automatic Target Acquisition for terminal guidance, she added.

Having nearly completed Operational Test, the JSOW C-1 anticipates Initial Operational Capability, or IOC, by the end of March 2016. Once operational, the weapon is likely to deploy on fighter platforms shortly thereafter.

uses same legacy JSOW C unitary warhead, a British-designed BROACH tandem lethal package (blast/frag and penetration capability) for use against point targets, Lynn explained.

The JSOW C-1 can even change course in flight if needed, and adjust to a changing or fast-moving target, Lynn added. In this respect, the new JSOW C-1 variant has some similarities with its predecessor, the JSOW C which can only hit stationary targets.

“One of the first Networked Enabled Weapons, the JSOW C-1 has a datalink capability that allows a controlling or targeting platform to provide updated targeting information in flight. These Inflight Target Updates facilitated via Link-16 enable greater weapon accuracy and enhance the probability of mission success,” Lynn said.

The existing JSOW C variant, which can be programmed from the cockpit, is able to fire against a wide range of fixed targets such as enemy buildings, bunkers, air defenses, equipment or troop locations.

“The weapon (JSOW C) has a pre-planned mode where mission planning is used and then also a target of opportunity mode where, if an aircrew needed to change targets in flight, a pilot can select a new target or incorporate third-party target location,” Ron Jenkins, Director of the Precision Standoff Strike Mission Area, Raytheon, told Scout Warrior in an interview.

Jenkins added that both variants of the weapon are engineered with an anti-jam technology, radio frequency countermeasures and an ability to tailor its trajectory or impact depending upon the disposition of a target. For instance, the weapon can be adjusted to destroy a hardened concrete bunker, he added.

“It does have a very robust GPS anti-jam capability and it also has waypoint navigation, which would enable operators to navigate around a threat. In addition to that, you can select the direction of arrival and the angle. For example, if you were going against a hardened bunker, you would want a steeper dive.”

While much of the details of this are not publically available for discussion, both JSOW variants are engineered with what’s called advanced “survivability” technology, meaning they are very difficult to shoot down, Jenkins added.

Moving forward, the JSOW C-1 can be fired from F/A-18 Super Hornet aircraft as well as the Navy’s carrier-launched variant of the Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35C.

New Navy Strategy

The development of this new JSOW C-1 weapon is entirely consistent with the Navy’s emerging “distributed lethality” strategy which aims to better arm the fleet with offensive and defensive weaponry to better address near-peer threats at sea.

“The maritime moving target offensive capability falls right in line with the Navy’s ‘distributed lethality.’ If you look at the current aircraft carrier fleet, you can bring an additive offensive capability that the JSOW C 1 brings to the maritime environment, particularly regarding the effect of offensive anti-surface warfare,” Mark Borup, JSOW business development manager.

Borup also said other ships in the Navy fleet might be able to embrace and integrate JSOW C 1 on other platforms across the service, an initiative which would expand the attack envelope from the service and help better “distribute” its “lethality.”

“This will bring a whole new dimension to warfighting at sea,” Borup added.

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US aircraft carrier patrols contested South China Sea, shadowed by Chinese warships

A full-blown aircraft carrier group with USS John C. Stennis at the helm transited the Luzon Strait March 1 and is now conducting patrols in the South China Sea.

The news comes in the wake of U.S. Pacific Commander’s

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that the U.S. Navy would increase its presence in the South China Sea. Admiral Harry B. Harris said the U.S. Navy would sail, fly and operate wherever international law allows.

The announcement was made in response to reports of Beijing’s actions the region. It has been said that China was “clearly militarising” the region by setting up missile launchers on the disputed islands.

According to the U.S. Navy, the John C. Stennis Strike Group (JCSSG) entered the region on March 1 and has maintained a location in the eastern half of these international waters for four days.

USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74), USS Chung-Hoon (DDG 93), USS Stockdale (DDG 106) and USS Mobile Bay (CG 53) all conducted a replenishment-at-sea receiving advanced biofuel, aviation fuel and supplies from USNS Rainier (T-AOE 7). Flight operations have occurred daily with Carrier Airwing (CVW) 9 conducting 266 sorties.

Numerous People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA(N)) vessels have remained in JCSSG’s vicinity during this time period.

Capt. Greg Huffman, Stennis’ commanding officer, said: “We have Chinese ships around us that we normally didn’t see in my past experience.

“Everything I have heard over bridge-to-bridge channels has been good communications between professional mariners,” he added.

In recent months, other U.S. Navy ships have conducted similar events in the 7th Fleet area of operations including the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers USS Curtis Wilbur (DDG 54), USS Lassen (DDG 82), USS Preble (DDG 88) and USS McCampbell (DDG 85), the multi-purpose amphibious assault ship USS Essex (LHD 2), the amphibious dock landing ship USS Ashland (LSD 48), the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville (CG 62), and the Freedom-class littoral combat ship USS Fort Worth (LCS 3).

However, Chinese officials declared two such sails as

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as they claimed that USS Lassen and USS Curtis Wilbur came too close to islands in the Spratly archipelago which China claims for itself.

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FORBIN said:

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Friday at 3:28 PM

Jura said:

related:

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US aircraft carrier patrols contested South China Sea, shadowed by Chinese warships

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

Sure in the short term B52 will keep on bomb trucking ...

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Jura said:

really?
Hypersonic missiles could be operational in 2020s, general says

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Long before hitching a ride to the moon aboard Apollo 11, then US Air Force test pilot Neil Armstrong was zipping around in a rocket-powered North American X-15, which to this day remains the fastest manned, winged aircraft ever built. That flight record of Mach 6.72 or 7,274km/h was set by pilot William “Pete” Knight in 1967.

Now, some 59 years later, America still hasn’t fully realised the promise that experimental flight vehicle held for military operations.

Despite many breakthroughs in the fields of hypersonic propulsion and high-temperature materials, the air force doesn’t imagine an affordable and operationally relevant surveillance and strike aircraft coming online until the late 2030s.

The storied Lockheed Martin SR-71 Blackbird flew at Mach 3.2, or three times the speed of sound, which is now short of what the air force says it needs to outpace modern interceptors.

Instead, the air branch is pushing hypersonic missiles, powered by the type of air-breathing scramjet engine that propelled Boeing's rocket-boosted Boeing X-51 WaveRider in 2013. Engineless boost-glide hypersonic weapon concepts are also being considered.

Under the High-Speed Strike Weapon project, flight experiments are planned by 2019 ahead of development and fielding in the early 2020s. At hypersonic speeds, a missile would hit a target 1,000nm away within 17 minutes or less. X-51 travelled 230nm in just over six minutes after dropping from a B-52 at 50,000ft.

In a new report released this week, sponsored by the Mitchell Institute, authors Richard Hallion and Curtis Bedke call for a re-doubling of efforts in this field to address the types of extended-range air defence systems and interceptor aircraft being developed and proliferated around the world by Russia and China. Though a militarised hypersonic aircraft is still many years away, tactical missiles are close at hand, they write.

If only the Pentagon had employed hypersonic weapons instead of subsonic Tomahawk cruise missiles when it went after Al Qaeda head Osama bin Laden in August 1998, the terrorist leader might have died, potentially avoiding the 9/11 attacks of 2001. That’s according to the authors, who decry the lack of coherent and sustained investment in hypersonic weapon technology since the X-15 days.

“US investment in hypersonics research and development is now at risk due to indecision and vacillation,” the report states. “Having pioneered hypersonic flight, the US must redouble its efforts to retain its lead in hypersonics. Hypersonic flight today is a practical reality, vice an expensive taxpayer-supported science project.”

In 2014, then Pentagon acting assistant secretary of defense for research and engineering Alan Shaffer said America doesn’t want to be “the second country to understand how to control hypersonics” – but this might come to pass if Russia and China continue their investments.

Russia intends to test a hypersonic missile by 2020 while China has conducted at least five tests of its Wu-14 boost-glide hypersonic vehicle, Hallion and Bedke note. If militarised, the Wu-14 could hit targets in minutes instead of hours and would be extremely difficult and expensive to intercept.

Speaking at the Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Florida last week, former USAF chief scientist and director of the IDA Science and Technology Policy Institute Mark Lewis described hypersonic missiles as the “low-hanging fruit” for military transition, compared to aircraft and aircraft-like space launch systems.

These “sharp and slender” scramjet missiles with almost no moving mechanical parts might someday be comparable in manufacturing cost to today’s subsonic and supersonic cruise missiles.

Lewis says the X-51 scramjet demonstrator “fully lived up to all the expectations of analysis and computation” during its final powered flight in May 2013. Now, the military must figure out the flight control, navigation and warhead integration pieces of the hypersonics puzzle.

“X-51 was a very practical configuration,” he says. “It burned a practical amount of fuel, JP-7. It was a flight-scale system, so you can look at the X-51 and see how you could go from that experimental vehicle to a real operational missile. Most importantly, it proved that that air-breathing propulsion technology, beyond any reasonable doubt, functions correctly by delivering thrust greater than drag and accelerating the vehicle essentially uphill in the atmosphere.”

The air force has more than doubled the amount of funding allocated to “accelerated” development and demonstration of an X-51 follow-on in its latest five-year budget submission. Funding is increased from $130 million to $309 million between fiscal years 2017 and 2020 compared to last year's submission, plus $22 million for 2021. Another $25 million per year is allocated for continued scramjet engine development, and more money is sprinkled across different lines of effort.

The X-51’s four flights between 2010 and 2013 involved just 353 seconds of scramjet engine operation, but “proved the practicality of a scramjet-powered free-flying vehicle,” according to the US Air Force Research Laboratory. Demonstrations of the scamjet and boost-glide concepts in partnership with DARPA aim to develop a tactical, long-range weapon for fielding in the 2020s.

Beyond that, AFRL says it is already “developing and ground testing larger engines for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and strike systems by 2030”.

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KC-46A refuels AV-8B Harrier using hose + drogue system.

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CVN 78 to go to sea for initial trials in June

The US Navy's (USN's) lead Ford-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is expected to go to sea for the first time for trials in late June with delivery to follow in late August, the officer in charge of the acquisition programme confirmed to IHS Jane's on 3 March.

Gerald R Ford (CVN 78) is 98% complete at Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) Newport News Shipbuilding division in Virginia, where the first-in-class carrier is proceeding through pierside testing on a number of its new shipboard systems, to include the Electromagentic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), Advanced Arresting Gear, Dual Band Radar, and propulsion plant.

"We're trying to get out to sea towards the end of June, and there's a couple of sea trial periods," the programme executive officer for carriers, Rear Admiral Thomas Moore, told IHS Jane's .

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