From someone who was part of the program
Yeppers, angel, sometimes we kick the gift horse in the mouth.
The program was the LOCPOD - Low Cost Powered Dispenser. It had three Sidewinder motors, so it could be launched by the Warthog at 300 feet and go 25 clicks off axis. From a Buff at 35K it could prolly go a hundred miles.
I did the aircraft integration design and the pilot interface and store control algorithms for the thing.
US, Canada, Sapin and Italy were the users, so I had to come up with something that would work on almost anything.
Used GPS to get it to airfields (primary tgt considering the WW3 scenario in eastern Europe). Puked out BKEP's, mines and other cluster munitions using airbags, no kidding! Tink they were from a Mecedes. Rand Corp said that a flight of four Wrthogs or Vipers could close any field in the Pact, and keep it closed for quite a few hours.
This was 1996-1997. Think of the Tornados we lost hitting Iraqi fields in Rocky 1. This would have been real nice, huh?
Oh well, the beat goes on.
heh heh, the LOCPOD was maybe 10 feet long. The Italians wanted to carry it on their new attack jets - the ones from Brazil, I tink.
It was in the 1,000 - 2000 pound class, but closer to 1,000 pounds.
The airbags deployed the sub-munitions horizontally after primacord cut rectangular holes in the sides of the thing. It stayed real stable and the test birds were able to pull up and deploy a parachute for recovery (the Brunswick dude at the tgt site had a model airplane radio control box for that - remember, it was "low cost").
The Buff could carry a whole bunch on their heavy beam stores stations.
USAF started to demand more and more capability and JAASM was looming. So now we don't have either, and this was over 15 years ago!!!! Additionally, at least one foreign country was afraid we'd cut off the P-code on the GPS, degrading accuracy. So there was a move to replace the GPS with another gudance system that actually cost more than the original round, full up. Then a consulting outfit thot we'd get better range with a tiny jet engine. Heh heh, just the engine cost more than the original and had worse storage problems.
Finally, as someone pointed out, the JSOW was in the mix and it had about the same weapon effects, but was harder to integrate on the various jets, especially the Warthog.
Over the course of 14 years in the business, the only one I ever worked on that was adopted was the JDAM. It was really hard to deny how cheap and effective it was once they tested 4 or 5 of them here. I had worked on the milli-meter wave Maverick, Harpoon for the Viper and Wind-corrected munitions dispenser.
The MMW Maverick was a beaut. It could zip out and look for tanks with its radar, then BAM! Could launch the thing maybe 10 miles away and set the tgt zone for the radar to search. The thing worked!
oh well, those days are gone forever. Guess I should let them go. (apologies to Don Henley).
