- The Coast Guard has cancelled its plans for firing ranges on the Great Lakes. For now.
I noted the plans last month. More info at MichiBlogger. - Boeing starts tests to integrate Small Diameter Bomb on F-22, F-16 jet fighter-bombers
Currently, only the F-15E can use the 250-pound GPS-guided GBU-39. - New Wars’ MiLinks
As usual, lots of good stuff. - Gadsden and Culpeper: The Official Don’t Tread On Me Outfitter
Looking for some last-minute stocking stuffers? DTOM gear is always popular! - The One Week Short of a Year Carnival of Homeschooling
This week at Principled Discovery. - Warriors for Hire: Blackwater USA and the rise of private military contractors
The Pentagon reports that about 100,000 private military and security contractors are currently in Iraq. Based on the nature of the sector, I’d guess that the number is actually quite a bit higher. - Drop the Bomb: Defense Tech’s 20 Biggest Posts of 2006
Obviously a bunch of good ones in there. Two posts by Murdoc made the list. Cool. - 172nd SBCT Legacy to Live on as Unit ‘Reflags’
The 172nd, just back from a 16-month deployment to Iraq, no longer exists.
No Responses to “Linkzookery – 20 Dec 2006”
Dfens: Sure, the SDB is a bit on the wimpy side, but that’s what it’s for. Just like we don’t go shooting everything with 155mm howitzers just because we can, we don’t go bombing everything with 2000 lb bombs just because we can. The SDB will allow more close air support in urban areas, and CLOSER air support because our troops won’t be threatened by a heavy coming down into the building next to the one they’re in. Sure, the SDB has limitations. But the biggies have limitations as well. Used properly, the SDB will greatly enhance the ability to support the guys on the ground. All that said, I’m not sure why they’re even bothering to fit the SDB onto the F-22. Are they still on that F/A-22 crap? The only way an F-22 will be spending time attacking ground targets will be as as the ‘kick in the doors’ tip of the spear or on a super stealth raid (such as Iranian nuke facilities). In both cases, we won’t be using 250 lb bombs. I still support the B-747 concept, with a commercial-based bomb platform orbiting 5 miles above the battlefield with hundreds of JDAMs of various sizes just waiting to go…
Why don’t they rename it the ‘we’re a nation of fairies’ bomb? Could they possibly come up with one more weapon that says ‘we have no balls?’
I thought SDB and F-22 were joined at the hip. The whole purpose of SDB was so the F-22 could hit more than one target with a bomb. It’s got pitifully little room for weapons and as far as I know they’ve scrapped every concept they had for wing mounting. At one point I think they were looking at a stealth pod that would surround the weapon and maintain the vehicle’s stealth characteristics. Failure upon failure upon failure. How is the SDB going to help the infantry? I mean, if you’re getting overrun, it’s by a lot of people, not just a few, right? Wouldn’t it be more effective if they put guidance on a napalm cannister if they really wanted to support the ground troops? Or how about building some more AC-130s? There’s nothing that says ground support like one of them babies. SDBs make me want to puke. SDBs are for the kind of army that charges these guys with murder. Hell, it’s a damn war! Wars are about killing. What part of that is lost on them?
A stealthly external weapons pod has been around for years. It went public back in 97. Northrop Grumman was the maker. It would of made the F-23 the airforce’s budgetary wet dream (Ah la F/A-23) So now, Lockheed is talking about a stealth pod in connection with the FB-22. In an attempt to give it a bomb load that would not be too embarrassing. A 60′s era F-111 would still have double to triple the bomb load per mile. Anyway the Lockheed pod should suck up a several hundred million or billions in R&D to reinvent the wheel. ( and still be inferior to Northrops’s – but I’m biased) That said, if we could field a common low observable external weapons pod, it would go a long way to improving the survivability to existing systems. (F-15,16′s) Chances are it would not be transferable to F-18′s.
Lockheed was talking about those pods. As far as I know, they never could make them work. They shoulda put them on the ends of the wings like tip tanks. Dimwits.