RetroSicotte wrote:Sounds like a fair deal to me to have a read! :p
Sticking with Spear 3 is definitely the better plan. It's just so damn far away.
JSM would solve a lot of issues in one single missile acquirement, and in a very short acquirement time as well. At least until Spear 5 arrives in god knows when. (After FASGW/Telemos I have no belief in their estimates when working with France anymore.)
Don't forget we are only really looking at the mid 2020s to get initial carrier strike capability based on the revised delivery schedules for the F-35 and when we get the bulk of our initial requirement.
The problem with weapons intergration is that the more complex the aircraft the harder it gets to integrate new weapons as not only is is about tying the system to the targeting system so you can shoot the damn thing, but thet need to study the aerodynamic, the efeect on the aircraft of carrying, manoevering, and launching all of which can have an impact of the flight control systems, then there is the mix and match loads and adjusting for those variables.
Whilst these technological marvels are supposed to be easy to fly, they still have to programme the FCS how to fly with them, which means lots of test flying to take measurements and lots of analysis and then lots of programming to splice in the new data, and then lots of debugging and testing then flight testing to ensure they got it right and that it doesn't compromise the existing coding.
Thats why they are worried about overdoing it, trying to do to much too quickly, they may miss something, loose a plane and loose a good 12-24+ mths identifying the cause, fixing and testing.
It does make you wonder if we put too much faith in the technology that it no longer becomes practical and may need move back some of the workload back to the pilots by using less complex FCSs
