US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter tphuang
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The American military definitely never rejected the effectiveness of an ASBM, it just had great considerations about the PLA's kill chain in an ASuW and that it could essentially be degraded or eliminated, rendering Chinese ASBM missiles blind and mute.
More than a few years ago the USN was upgrading its ASW combat system. The engineers were quite proud of its improved accuracy and wouldn't launch an ASROC unless the torpedo could reach the submarine. When the Navy officers found out about this, they demanded the feature be removed so when they commanded Launch the command would be executed. When the engineers said the torpedo wouldn't reach the submarine, the officers answered "Can the guy in the submarine be 100% sure about that?"
Surface launched sm-6 has range of 260 miles, so this would have pretty decent range as air launched even without the booster. Can't be fitted in internal bay tho.The official designation for the air launched SM-6 is AIM-174. It was spotted on a Navy Boeing F-18 Super Hornet during the ongoing Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise.
Not much else is known about the missile currently other than the fact that it doesn't have the booster of the SM-6 and has some testing marks on the missile visible in the photo. I am going to guess that this may be the Navy answer to the Chinese PL-17 or maybe a temporary answer to the PL-17.
But not a bad stop gap until dedicated long range a2a comes online.
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This is what happens when you have a bunch of decision makers that don't understand and don't trust math, science, and engineering.
Too little, too late, the F-35 acquisition "air dominance" blight can't be cured . Especially since the proposed "cure" is to save production money buying fewer planes from L-M in order to give L-M R&D money to fix its "software" problems.
Laugh lines aplenty. Some examples:
Laugh lines aplenty. Some examples:
You can meaningfully count aircraft on the flight line, not so much for software lines of code. Another win for L-M.
Books have been written (Bill Sweetman) and reports have been written (GAO). Congress refused to read them, even reports by its own CRS.
This is the best laugh line of all. The intended action is flawed on so many perspectives I don't know where to start. But the problem remains if L-M can't do the job who can?
Military Tweet are really hyping this development. Is it that revolutionary?The official designation for the air launched SM-6 is AIM-174. It was spotted on a Navy Boeing F-18 Super Hornet during the ongoing Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise.
Not much else is known about the missile currently other than the fact that it doesn't have the booster of the SM-6 and has some testing marks on the missile visible in the photo. I am going to guess that this may be the Navy answer to the Chinese PL-17 or maybe a temporary answer to the PL-17.
They basically decided to rewrite the entire Air Force aviation stack in C++. Not just the entire avionics software for radar control, and controlling the aircraft, but also the control software for each weapon system, etc. And now after almost two decades the whole thing is bugged to hell and still is not 100% complete. This was done supposedly because it would be easier to contract people with C++ experience. Idiotic. Worst of all is that much of the rest of the industry today has been moving towards Rust as a programming language to replace C++. So you can expect eventually yet another program to rewrite the entire stack again.
For the US navy, it's a big deal. They never had a 400 km ranged air to air missile. (Estimate) They literally doubled the reach of their previous best, while likely improving lethality. Plus, as the sm-6 showed, it can really be used as a multirole missile. For anti air, anti missile, anti ship and land attack.
The missile in the picture has "INERT" written in it. This is likely just a captive carry test to see if the missile would work properly when attached to the aircraft. Probably a long way from being operational.
It is a big deal for the USN since they were outmatched by PLA aircraft with the latest long range Chinese missiles.