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From: gwh%tornado.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: FOG-M
Summary: FOG-M not compromised...
Message-ID: <1991Feb13.031235.25778@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 13 Feb 91 03:12:35 GMT
References: <1991Feb8.013948.17818@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: UCB Open Access Computing
Lines: 36
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: gwh%tornado.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert)

In article <1991Feb8.013948.17818@cbnews.att.com> berenson@cookie.enet.dec.com (Deer, Dogs, and Runners: What are the favorite foods of Mountain Lions?  07-Feb-1991 0915) writes:
>The original concept of the FOG-M was as an over the horizon anti-tank
>missle.  With something like TOW, you must have line of sight to the
>target and the wire is only used to send steering signals to the missle.
>With laser guided missles, someone (on the ground or in the air) still
>has to be line of sight to the target.  With a FOG-M, you launch in the
>direction of the battlefield.  A camera in the missle transmits over the
>fiber and allows someone to guide the missle while staying out of harms
>way.  The military never showed interest in this application of the
>missle.

Not true.  They didn't have a defined need for a beyond-visual-range AT 
missile.  They still don't, though it's a neat idea, but they did come up
with (albeit by accident) something else to do with it... 

>The original beauty of FOG-M was simplicity, low-cost, and protection of
>the gunner.  In trying to turn it into a SAM system, all that was lost.
>The concept is still applicable to, and probably infallable as, an
>anti-tank weapon.

I find it hard to classify FOG-M as a weapon without simplicity and low cost.
There were almost no changes made in the anti-helo capable model from the
earlier test ones, and those were done to improve produceability.  The first
models were a TOW with a TV camera grafted on the nose.  The newer ones are
more optomized.


  == George William Herbert ==   * UNIX ate my last .sig, Waiting for Plan 9! *
 == JOAT for Hire: Anything, ==  #########  I do Naval Architecture, ##########
===+++ Anywhere, my price +++=== # Spacecraft Design, UNIX Systems Consulting #
 ==  gwh@soda.berkeley.edu   ==  # RPG writing/development, and lots of other #
  ==  gwh@ocf.berkeley.edu  ==   ## random stuff, of course.  I'm a JOAT 8-) ##