Beyond Visual Range AAMs

The AIM-7 Sparrow series has been the classic 'yardstick' in the medium-range, beyond visual range (BVR) category. The US follow-up to Sparrow is the AIM-120 AMRAAM which is a true 'fire-and-forget' msl.

Bombs

The original element of air-to-gnd weaponry is the bomb and it still remains so albeit with a little more sophistication. One often hears talks of 'iron'or 'dumb' bombs and these refer to conventional high-explosive (HE) bombs released and aimed in the traditional way.

In essence, bombs remain unchanged from 50 years ago and older stocks may well find themselves updated for the 2000s with a new fusing sys. They are classified according to filler as nuc, TN, HE, FAE, fire, drill, practice, and chemical. HE bombs, in turn, are classed according to use as SAP, GP, low-drag GP, frag, and AD.

Bombs are carried by racks or shackles in the acft's bomb bay, or as external stores at stations under the wing or fus and can be released singly or in pairs in preselected intervals, or in train or salvo.

In the use of unguided bombs, the principal advances have been made in terms of low-level delivery, area coverage and tgt penetration. Low-level rel demands retardation of the bomb to ensure adequate separation from the launch acft at detonation. Braking is achieved by means of a conventional pcht, by metal airbrakes or by an air-inflatable retarder.

The need to ensure more accuracy led, during the Vietnam war, to the development of the laser-guided bomb (LGB) and its associated laser designator sys, usually pod-mounted under the wing of the carrier acft. Texas Instruments is a US leader in LGBs, with its Paveway sys fitted to many US bombs (with the designator GBU).

Where accuracy is not so important, another way of obtaining kills is to go for area coverage and the cluster bomb fits this niche. Effectively, it is a droppable casing containing a large number of smaller submunitions which, when released, cover a large area. Whds may be simple HE, delayed-action mines or armor-piercing. In the US, such wpns are assigned the designator 'CBU' (Cluster Bomb Unit) usually with a secondary name relating to its role. The CBU-87 Combined Effects Munition is one example. The best known is probably the 222 kg Rockeye, which releases 247 armor-piercing bomblets. In the denial version of the bomb 87 bomblets explode on impact and the remaining 160 detonate later at individually preset times.

Dispenser Weapons

From the cluster bomb came the dispenser sys wpn, which is available in several forms: overflight laydown; stand-off dispensers with 'smart' submunitions; or sophisticated cluster bombs with dedicated submunitions for specific roles.

Textron Defense Systems' CBU-97 Sensor Fused Weapon (SFW) is one of the latter examples. It consists of the SUU-64 Tactical Munition Dispenser (TMD) containing ten BLU-108 submunitions. Each submunition contains four 'smart' projs, which are capable of detecting and penetrating moving armd tgts. The wpn can be delivered at airspeeds between 20 and 650 kts at all altitudes with level, dive or toss rels.