Chinese JDAM

Originally posted by Daedalus3

Originally posted by northwolf
Daedalus
The GPS system can be istantly turned to military only mode = No one but US armed forces and those that USA trusts can use the system.
Most likely this means that the positioning signal is switched to frequencies that are out side normal recievers band/encrypted /freq-hopping

There are two bands of frequencies on the GPS: civilian and military
The US military uses the military one(employing all of what you described above) and everyone else uses the other one.
If your were to turn off the civilian band successfully in only a particular area, which itself is difficult to do accurately, it would affect all neutral parites depending on GPS too.

If it came to an actual conflict...the neutral partys would not matter. Nor would the needs of the citizens of this nation for instance. IT wouldnt matter. Such is the difficult nature of political decisions which have to be made. And someone would make the decision..no doubt.

Thanks,
Orangetom

Glide Kits Work When The Aircraft Can Survive Long Enough To Penetrate At Altitude.

Period. Dot.

Between the more advanced SM-2/3/6 and the PAC-2/3 the U.S. fields some of the most dominant S2A systems on the planet. Only the SA-20 somethings and ASTER are competitive.

While we also maintain the questionable option of an outer air battle zone manned intercept with AMRAAM and NCTR capable airframes; the reality remains that ADSAM capabilities will likely provide the ability to engage any airframe crossing the radar horizon within a 500km circle _very soon_ for the USN.

And at least 1/5th this for the Army equivalent.

At which point wing kits go from being 65km wonder weapons to 6-10km death rides often requiring a highly lethal toss maneuver for the delivery aircraft to gain full flyout.

That the Chinese choose only to copy a commonly known existing technique (see AWADI, JDAM-ER etc.) so blatantly without really /understanding it's tactical employment vices/ only furthers the image of the monkey-see-do stereotype.

Now if they field a VLO UCAV to go with...

In any case, the copying is all well and good because the Diamond Back on the GBU-39 and JDAM-ER are in fact sourced to an Italian company, Alenia. But the fact remains that even if this munition were to be 'only for commercial sale' as the Chinese concentrate upon powered weapons designed to kill much higher valued targets like CVSF; it still ups the ante for regional threat escalation as a function of keeping the U.S. forever chasing a new standard in arms export at minimum iciteful effort by a nation that nominally is the source of 70% of our trade goods.

i.e. With MFN 'friends' like these...

There are a few other facts which should be noted as well:

1. Cheap IAMs.
Especially those which permit multiple standoff carriage change the nature of the game. Rather than use PGMs on a 'both bombs, one target' basis of high cost and high risk (DEAD and EA on every penetrating mission rapidly soaks these limited assets) for point targets whose 'value' is often more related to infrastructure and industry than (evacuated) military facilities; you can begin to hit specific military force targets IN THE FIELD. Or indeed anywhere they are found. And particularly as applies to the heavier weight munitions, this means the ability to get an airburst within 30ft may well be sufficient to score a kill 'anyway'. This still does not remove the vulnerability of the launch aircraft. But it does imply the option to chip away at target sets which normally might not be considered worth the effort to kill.

2. Any Emitter Can Be Targeted.
Again, particularly when you are carrying enough small munitions to undertake the effort. And GPS Jamming is a local area effect which means that a munition which arrives at the basket from a slingbomb profile may only lose terminal correction vs. primary (midcourse) updating. What this means is that the JDAM which was /never/ a 'semi precise' 30ft CEP weapon (having averaged roughly a 2.65 meter error rating in two wars) may lose a meter or two in switching over to pure IMU strapdown but nothing which prevents the munitions from being used on any but the tightest of collaterals protected targets (and not even then if the warhead weight is small enough).
While U.S. efforts in AJam technologies are ongoing, it remains certain from funding commentaries that AJam modules have been inserted into the baseline guidance sections so the effects of jamming have been felt.

3. There Are Alternatives.
The French actually began their own IAM munition effort as or before we were finalizing for GAM and JDAM in a program called 'Excalibur'. This system achieved some success but was never productionized. The follow AASM was however and comes in multiple varieties in the 500-1,000lb class with the option of a seeker and a rocket booster in a single, unified, case. In many ways, particularly once DEWS and Hunting Munitions come online, such an approach may prove to be a wiser investment, simply because they allow for conventional aircraft to trade low level risks to trashfire against 'over the horizon' lobshots combining airframe lofting and rocket boost to attain downrange impact values on the order of 10-20nm. While this is insufficient against a truly advanced ADSAM threat (CEC+), it again opens the field for truly lethal attacks on fielded forces, /provided/ the French continue the program and overcome certain technical issues within the vibration and positioning signal access on a powered weapon.
The Russians and Chinese now also having IAM programs, the real question becomes one of 'how long' vs. 'how hard' it is to productionize a FOG or RLG based munition that is cheap enough to manufacture in numbers sufficient to offset any residual inertial-only or inertial plus Euro-GPS/GLONASS vulnerable constellations.

4. Inertial + GPS is not the BAEA.
As multiple efforts with Hammerhead, Orca, DAMASK, AMSTE and even SPICE have shown; it is entirely possible to fit an augmented seeker system which will function in a fashion similar to Pershing II in taking a snapshot from premission briefed (satellite overhead) or 'live' (airframe sensor group, on or offboard) targets and matching that chip memory to an onboard X-SAR, MMW or EO seeker image as the bomb descends. In this, the effort to integrate becomes more difficult but there are still sufficient numbers of advanced bolometric (uncooled) single-chip imagers out there _on the civillian market_ to render reliance on GPS as more than a 'nice to have' midcourse aid unnecessary. The key seems to be cost with a production DAMASK unit, based on civillian (Cadillac as I recall) driver visionics running about 12,000 dollars for a system which, though apt to image smeer and vibrational issues, still gave roughly 2m accuracies.

On another front, the use of differential signal guidance is also a possibility. This adds a local or wide area 'fourth satellite' to the mix in the form of air or ground stations which augment the existing satellite feeds and help compensate for atmospheric anaprop errors in gaining absolutely precise positioning. With this capability; accuracy goes down to the 4-17 INCH level and you have the ability to hit individual vehicle or troop clusters from the full range at which they may be sensor-resolved. It can even be extended to moving targets where the glide capabilities of the munition assure sufficient terminal maneuver reserve and their are two aircraft to provide dual target overlap coverage using MTI (which has relatively loose TLE functions due to low doppler thresholds on most ground targets as seen against the clutter). In this, you are no longer able to count upon GPS-only signal jamming but must also be able to actively interdict a second /band/ coming through the JTIDS network. While the U.S. is rapidly becoming as if not MORE vulnerable to netcentric attacks on it's electronic datahandling systems, it remains difficult to target multiple such devices from a single system and (typically terrestrial) location with sufficient effect as to interdict in-flight munitions whose own TOF position is not always known precisely, even by the launch airframe (one word: 'windage').

CONCLUSION:
As stated above, there are a lot directions, not all of them U.S. based, in which we could expect to see things progress. Copying teacher-printed letters is the first step to learning to write and writing is the first step to evoking internally unique ideas. In this, a Chinese JDAM, much like a Chinese LANTIRN pod copy, may not be as important for what it mockup-here says of their eventual intent so much as it does their willingness, with our money and machine tools, to investigate all avenues in a fashion more openly slavish than the Russians did. So that they can match our strides by walking in our snow prints until they have the strength to choose their own path. Even so, it is unfortunate and all too unsurprising (with the number of Chinese engineers now working in U.S. companies because we cannot graduate enough of our own people to do the job) that they choose to specifically penetrate and exploit OUR weapons development efforts so closely. Indicating not merely that they 'wish to flatter U.S.' but that our security is the easiest to compromise.

Again, there is NO PROOF that the included image is anything but an airshow mockup. But even so, we would be well advised to secure our defense by not being quite so tightly tied to the commercial side of a manufacturing effort which could rapidly expand past trade goods to high leverage weapons system manufacture. After all, we never allowed Boeing to farm out manufacturting to Sukhoi and the Russians were clannish and paranoid-insular dopes compared to the sleep-with-anybody Chinese.


KPl.

Bit off topic but will galileo/sat nav (europe's up and coming GPS) be stand alone to GPS satalites? Everything i've read says that it ties into GPS and inhances it but should the US turn off GPS will it matter any more?

Are those steel bands holding on the wings going to break in a dive? They look weak to me. I think they should paint the bomb itself white to make this thing look more professional and deadly.

Originally posted by denythestatusquo
They look weak to me. I think they should paint the bomb itself white to make this thing look more professional and deadly.

lol

one thing I have to agree, dispite the actual power, most chinese military equipments appeared really ugly and weak..... Seriously! When they first came out unpainted, they looked alright, but after paintings, most weapons appeared to be weak and outdated... PLA seems to like a weak appearance.....

the pakistan verison of the chinese equipments appeared wayyyy stronger after adding their layers of paintings, eventhough the actual weapon might not be as strong.

ie.--noticed in the following two pics, how much stronger the pakistan verison of the same old J7(mig 21) appears to be?




[edit on 10/27/2006 by warset]

EDIT: Double post

[edit on 1-11-2006 by chinawhite]

Some LS-6 data from Zhuhai Airshow:

Can modify the existing 500kg bomb to become LS-6
Launched @ 9000m with initial speed of M1, range > 60km
Launched @12000m with initial speed of M1, range > 80km

INS + GPS/Glonass CEP < 10 meter

Did that J-8 fly at Zhuhai 06?
When was that taken?

it si reality,ia it realuity.

Originally posted by Daedalus3
Did that J-8 fly at Zhuhai 06?

The J-8 is a testbed, the picture was probaly taken before Zhuhai