Seen in model form here at the Paris Air Show, Sagem’s Hammer rocket-boosted weapons family would be carried on wing-mounted racks under the wing pylons of a C-130 Hercules. (Photo: David McIntosh)
Seen in model form here at the Paris Air Show, Sagem’s Hammer rocket-boosted weapons family would be carried on wing-mounted racks under the wing pylons of a C-130 Hercules. (Photo: David McIntosh)
Lovely! Test it against ISIL in Iraq.
Back in the 1950s I worked on inertial navigation systems for air-launched cruise missiles. One of our big problems was transferring data from the INS in the airplane to an INS in a missile hanging on the wing, because the wing flexed in flight enough to have the missile misaligned from the airplane INS by several degrees. At the ranges we were considering, that would result in a complete miss of the target. This solution gets around any problems arising from wing flexing.
We have a lot of C-130s and they can be deployed to many airstrips fighters cannot such as short concrete or even dirt strips and more bare-base facilities, plus loiter times are measured in hours with self-contained fuel.
It would especially increase our offensive capability in remote regions and would lessen the need for air refueling assets. You could deploy aircraft with the weapons in the cargo compartment and then mount them upon arrival, plus have reloads available for follow on strike missions. All you really need is somebody on the ground near the targets to feed the target data to the aircraft crew as it is a stand-off weapon.
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