Posted on 08/28/2015 5:05:43 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
U.S. Army
The Armys Multi-Mission Launcher is expected to fire a variety of missiles.
This is just an update to the old Chappral (Sidewinder) anti-aircraft system of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-72_Chaparral
The arrival sounds great.The only question I have is it cost effective to use a highly expensive sidewinder missile against an inexpensive drone?
It would probably be cheaper using LASERs to take out those drones.Not to mention faster as well.
Sounds like the military is returning to tank warfare. This configuration is used to defend tanks from aircraft attacks.
Holy carp, using a sidewinder misile to take out a mortar round? That doesn’t make a hell lot of sense to me.
I don’t think that’s the idea; the Sidewinder’s a heat-seeking missile, and mortar rounds aren’t particularly hot.
What i have seen of drones, are that they are kept aflight by electrical motors, unless we are talking the ones that are actual airframes with missiles under the wings, which are not ‘drones’, but ‘remotely piloted vehicles’.
Electrical motors do not put out much of a heat signature, considering that the motors are cooled by the very propellers they power.
The ‘rpv’s’ actually use turboprops or small jet engines, either of which DO create a heat signature.
The ‘chapparal’ system was a tracked/wheled vehicle with four Sidewinders mounted. Another heat-tracking missile is the Stinger shoulder fired missile, which also was mounted on wheeled vehicles, and as an R&D project, mounted on the turret of tanks, and lastly, mounted on the turret of the PHALANX CIWS system, mounted on either wheeled/tracked vehicles.
I believe the AIM-9X and similar missiles have imaging IR seekers that are far better suited for track low-heat and stealth targets.
UV seeker as well.
They use IR/UV in combination as most aircraft these days will glint in the UV spectrum.
And if they take the radar seeker from the experimental radar homing Stinger, or combine it with the other two seeker modes, it will be interesting indeed.
I led two Chaparral platoons back in the 70s. I've been out of the Army so long, the battalion I served in was deactivated at least 15 years ago.
Makes sense one artillery battery can serve multiple functions just by swapping ammunition
dear comrade sukhoi,
the AIM-9x series has been around since the 1950’s.
All the launch systems have been going through the wringer since that time. This latest picture shows the missiles inside ‘launcher containers’, which does make handling the missiles a lot easier for the fragile electronics than boxing/unboxing and hoisting them onto external launcher rails.
The Stinger missiles were developed and began production in the 1980’s, of which I participated.
Could be.
Article also mentions artillery rounds, which I would expect would be relatively warm from friction with the barrel.
Sounds like you may not have had a large mortar fired at you.
Perhaps the Army is re-discovering the need for air defense, eventhough ISIS doesn’t have an air force, yet.
My battalion provided SHORAD to 3 airbases. I did two years at our battery at Hahn, and 2 years at Battalion HQ: assistant S-3, ending with about 18 months as S-4. Hated to leave, but it was time to return to the States.
Good, we finally found you.
We hope you kept your uniform.
IMHO the chap (with its proximity fuse) has enough explosive to divert the incoming large mortar or artillery, but not enough penetration to destroy the round.
From an old US Army Air Defender standpoint, this is just more mother Raytheon crap.
I worked at the Air Defense Board in the early 80s. One of the things I noticed right off the bat was the previous five Board Presidents went to work for Raytheon shortly after retiring from active duty.
I found the "reunions" at testing sites to be quite nauseating.
Somebody should have gone to jail over the money wasted on SGT York. I read the test results.
I need to drop 30 lbs to fit into it. My field jacket fits though, as long as there’s only a t-shirt underneath...lol.
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