Friday, August 31, 2012

JSOW, Smart Pigs

Actually JSOW is "Joint Standoff Weapon".  It's getting smarter.  Aviation Week has a picture of the thing plunging into a container laden container ship.  Lots of text about net work centric weapons and the coolness thereof.  Seems like this JSOW was launched off an F/A 18 aimed at one target ship from 50 miles away.  A second F/A 18 took over control of the glide bomb in flight and retargeted it onto the containership. 
   Do we really want this?  I like missiles that hit the target they are aimed at.  If we can retarget the thing in flight, so can the enemy.  If  you have two targets, bring two missiles and get 'em both.
   Looks like yet another program that could be sequestered without hurting anything (except the contractor, Raytheon in this case).

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