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From: dvlssd@cs.umu.se (Stefan Skoglund)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Lots of answers and some questions
Message-ID: <1991Jan24.041201.23335@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 24 Jan 91 04:12:01 GMT
References: <1991Jan23.040415.5172@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: Dep. of Info.Proc, Umea Univ., Sweden
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From: dvlssd@cs.umu.se (Stefan Skoglund)
In article <1991Jan23.040415.5172@cbnews.att.com> moudgill@svax.cs.cornell.edu (Mayan Moudgill) writes:
>Some questions:
>Runway Penetration Bombs:
>	Does the American arsenal have any? I think that there was
Answer : The Durandal is a member of the american arsenal.
Carried by mostly F-111.
The F-111 wing at Cannon tested it some years ago.
They tried to simulate an airfield. they dropped some
and then they tried to guess : what if it had been some real concrete.
They couldn't test as much as they wanted to because then you must have
access to real runways and nobody wanted his to be blown up.

>Sparrow vs Sidewinder:
>
During the vietnam war they found that if you fired a sparrow in anger
it didn't hit.
Most of the problem is this : you must light up the enemy with  your radar
for the sparrow to hit.
The sparrow searches on the radar return.

Sidewinder is a shot-and-forget weapon in that sense what it is purely
passive. It homes on the targets  heat.
Firing sequence  :
Missile enable.
It starts to home.
Target found, Sound a little signal.
Hotter target = high signal.
The pilot fires.
Missile free.
Flying with mach3 towards the target.
Hit.

The Phoenix has it own auto-pilot and a little radar for the final run.

>Copperhead:
Answer : The copperhead works fine as least as I now.
The main problem was the intended way of getting the laser to bear.
They constructed a rpv the Aquila and equipped it with a TV-camera with 
a target-designator laser.
All the operator had to do was keep the laser on the target and he would 
get a hit.
Now we have the problem :
To get a good and jam-secure earth-datalink they couldn't get enoug data-speed
out to get a good picture.
In the end it looked like this :
The screen refreshed, wait 2 seconds, the refreshed again.
Remember that the main target for the copperhead was tanks.
To kill a tank with a arty round you must put it right on.
Impossible then you think about this :
A tank at full speed moves easily 35 m in 2 seconds.
Forget the idea.

But if you can get something like a GI, OV-10 or a Kiowa, equip them with a
laser designator and then get them near enough then you will have a good
weapon.
The only problem is this  : the Copperhead is expensive.

A little story about F-105G.
During the Vietnam war all American fighters were ordered to wear
Jamming epuipment the ALQ-87.
Including the F-105G.
F-105G was one of the early Wild-Weasel aircraft.
The pod took one weapon-station and what was bad because if they put it on
it would jam the RHAW gear and they wouldn't have the faintest idea where the
enemy radars were.
Needless to say they didn't used it so much.

Stefan Skoglund, dvlssd@cs.umu.se

ps
Flame me in swedish.
ds