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In the use of
unguided bombs
, the principal advances have been made in
terms of
low-level delivery
,
area coverage
and
tgt penetration
. Low-level rel
demands
retardation
of the bomb to ensure adequate separation from the launch acft
at detonation.
Braking
is achieved by means of a conventional pcht, by metal
airbrakes or by an air-inflatable retarder.
The need to ensure more accuracy led, during the Vietnam war, to the
development of the
laser-guided bomb
(LGB) and its associated laser designator
sys, usually pod-mounted under the wing of the carrier acft. Texas Instruments is a
US leader in LGBs, with its Paveway sys fitted to many US bombs (with the
designator GBU).
Where accuracy is not so important, another way of obtaining kills is to go for
area coverage
and the
cluster bomb
fits this niche. Effectively, it is a droppable
casing containing a large number of smaller submunitions which, when released,
cover a large area. Whds may be simple HE, delayed-action mines or armor-piercing.
In the US, such wpns are assigned the designator 'CBU' (Cluster Bomb Unit) usually
with a secondary name relating to its role. The CBU-87 Combined Effects Munition
is one example. The best known is probably the 222 kg Rockeye, which releases 247
armor-piercing bomblets. In the denial version of the bomb 87 bomblets explode on
impact and the remaining 160 detonate later at individually preset times.
Dispenser Weapons
From the cluster bomb came the
dispenser
sys wpn, which is available in
several forms: overflight laydown; stand-off dispensers with 'smart' submunitions; or
sophisticated cluster bombs with dedicated submunitions for specific roles.
Textron Defense Systems' CBU-97 Sensor Fused Weapon (SFW) is one of the
latter examples. It consists of the SUU-64 Tactical Munition Dispenser (TMD)
containing ten BLU-108 submunitions. Each submunition contains four 'smart' projs,
which are capable of detecting and penetrating moving armd tgts. The wpn can be
delivered at airspeeds between 20 and 650 kts at all altitudes with level, dive or toss
rels.
Air-to-Ground Missiles
From the various permutations of what may be called 'bombs' it is a short step
to the air-to-gnd msl. Systems of this class include categories covering dedicated
conventional land atk, anti-armor, anti-radiation and anti-ship ops.
In the past most air-to-gnd guided wpns have been designed to atk a single tgt,
such as a bridge or concrete emplacement. Attention is now being directed toward the
problem of destroying a number of separate tgts in a single firing run, such as a gp of
tks. The sys that has gained favor in the US is the Hypervelocity Missile (HVM),
with a FLIR sensor tracking both tgts and msls and generating corrective signals that
are transmitted over a laser data-link. The msl defeats the armor of the tgt by means
of its kinetic energy.
