5 Weapons Systems to Reduce Collateral Damage

[Malleus]

5 Weapons Systems to Reduce Collateral Damage

By David Hambling

 

In the early days of the coalition air war over Libya, finding and destroying ground vehicles was easy because they were moving through the open desert. As the campaign progressed, Muammar Gaddafi's forces nestled closer to cities—and civilian buildings—to gain protection. Tactics like these in Iraq and Afghanistan have crated a boom industry in weapons that can strike targets without causing collateral damage. Technology has come a long way, and these are five of the best weapon technologies to do it. But the fact is air strikes will always come with a price.

 

Full article:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/planes-uavs/5-weapons-systems-to-reduce-collateral-damage?click=pp#fbIndex1

 

>thought this was interesting

[tflash]

In the same league and very succesful in the Libya campaign is the UK Brimstone dual mode missile launched from Tornado:

 

http://www.defencemanagement.com/news_story.asp?id=16132

 

http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/MilitaryOperations/BrimstoneMissilesDestroyArmouredVehiclesInLibya.htm

[Pilotasso]

Old weapons also found new use. Laser mavericks and helfires got used again.

[Malleus]

Brimstone

 

By the way, does the US have a comparable weapon? The only one I can think of is the Maverick but that's much heavier.

[tflash]

Brimstone is based on a Hellfire airframe, but all the rest is different. Brimstone is mmW, dual-mode Brimstone adds semi-active laser to that.

 

Current Hellfire II missiles, such as used on the MQ-9 Reaper have similar performance, however they are not dual-mode and are mostly used in their SAL variants. The L version for the Longbow Apache uses mmW.

 

A more advanced US counterpart would be the JAGM (Joint Air To Ground Missile), which is in early stages of development.