Saturday, March 05, 2016

AMG-154 Joint Standoff Weapon, or JSOW ready for use against ships at sea.



via DODBuzz
The U.S. Navy will soon deploy a new air-launched, precision-guided weapon that features a two-way data-link to identify and destroy moving targets at sea, giving fighters such as the F/A-18 Super Hornet a vastly improved attack envelope against a wider range of threats.
Called the AMG-154 Joint Standoff Weapon, or JSOW, the Raytheon Co.-built attack bomb uses GPS , inertial measurement unit guidance 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 away as 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 on-board database of ship characteristics stored in the weapon database selected in mission planning or in the cockpit,” Navy spokeswoman Lt. Amber Lynn said.
What do you do when you see a service peddling hard to fix what they allowed to get messed up, but the fix doesn't thrill and seems more like a bandaid so that when they hand the keys off to the next guy they can say that they tried?

Do you keep pounding them or do you give them credit for recognizing the problem?

That's what we have to decide with this announcement.  Should we pat the Navy on the back because they're trying to fix the issue that they have with regard to attacking enemy shipping?  Or do we take a good look at JSOW and realize that the Chinese, Russians and others have weapon systems that can effectively engage and destroy these glide bombs before they hit?  Do we look at enemy anti-air systems and realize that they can attack our aircraft before they get to launch distance and curse the Navy for spending money on an inadequate solution?

You tell me.




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