The M72A7 is a lightweight, shoulder-launched, disposable munition meant to defeat lightly armored vehicles and other hard targets at close ranges. It fires a 66mm high-explosive, anti-tank rocket. With a weight of approximately 8 pounds and a length of about 30 inches, it allows rapid engagement of stationary and moving targets to a maximum range of 350 meters, according to Gary Barber, team leader and project officer for Shoulder-Launched Munitions at Picatinny.
Unmanned vehicles will be seen on the frontlines sooner then expected with the acceleration of unmanned systems evaluation at White Sands Missile Range.
The U.S. Army Program Manager of the Future Combat Systems announced
Jan. 17 that the Future Combat Systems Brigade Combat Team will start evaluating and training Soldiers to use the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle and the Class I Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. Originally these systems weren't scheduled for evaluation until 2011, but under the accelerated program evaluations will begin early this year.
The Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle, nicknamed the packbot, is a compact remote vehicle that can enter confined spaces and buildings and transmit video back to provide soldiers with tactical intelligence. The Class I Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is a compact man-portable air vehicle that can provide video feeds to soldiers, providing them with a bird's-eye view of the battlefield. Both vehicles have had a lot of positive reviews from soldiers using preproduction versions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While both unmanned systems have preproduction variants already seeing combat in Iraq, these new versions will have increased functionality that will provide
The Class I UAV will be upgraded with an early version of the Army's Joint Tactical Radio System. The JTRS is an advanced radio system that according to Boeing, which is developing the system, will allow the Army to establish an ad-hoc wireless network anywhere in theater. Unlike normal radios, this new system will be able to transmit virtually any kind of data, allowing even the smallest tactical unit to share information with nearly any other unit in the Army network. Mounting this system on the Class I UAV means that the UAV will be able to transmit real time video and fly above obstructions to extend the range of a unit's communications.
In total 25 Small Unmanned Ground Vehicles and 11 Class 1 UAVs will be evaluated on their abilities and effectiveness in the field. "Part of the evaluations will be leader training, where the Army will seek opportunities on how to use the UAV for such operations as route clearance and base security," said Richard Fisher, deputy product manager future force unmanned aircraft systems.
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When fully operational, the electromagnetic railgun (EMRG) will:
- Deliver hypervelocity projectiles at Mach 5 on impact in support of Marines and ground forces.
- Strike within 5 meters of a pinpointed target from distances in excess of 200 nautical miles.
- Maximize damage through kinetic energy from longer range while minimizing risks to crews and ships.
Because of its design, EMRG uses electrical energy to deliver a time-critical strike rather than the chemical agents in warheads and propellants that can place crews and ships in jeopardy. EMRG represents significant advances in Navy and Marine Corps capabilities, extends the range of Marine Corps combat capability and distributed operations, and improves safety aboard sea vessels. The electromagnetic railgun is just one more leap-ahead technology catapulted by scientists at the Office of Naval Research.
Electromagnetic Railgun: An Innovative Naval Program
But in Desportes’ view, future wars will be against an enemy that seeks to outflank the Western technical and industrial armory. That undercuts the effectiveness of the transformation effort, which assumes a state enemy with a hierarchy of decision-makers and physical assets suitable for precision bombing.
“This typically American approach focuses on the destruction of the enemy rather than the search for better paths to obtain the political result,” Desportes writes. “It is about conducting technically perfect strike operations rather than transforming these operations into strategic success.”
Transformation has been ineffective against nonstate entities like the Taliban, now fighting from caves, insurgents triggering roadside bombs in Iraq and suicide bombers. In Afghanistan, small groups of combatants avoid attacking in open ground.
One of the book’s central messages: Military planners’ focus on mobility, strike and communications, if devoid of political awareness, may win battles but end up losing wars. Thus, while precision-strike weapons are necessary, they are insufficient to winning the war, because stand-off weapons destroy but cannot occupy territory and control population.
Technology is useful, but troops must be able to fight without sophisticated networks, because such systems are vulnerable to cyber attacks.
A network-enabled approach is valuable because it allows troops to be more cost-efficient, but a network-centric Army is one that is geared to destruction, and therefore counterproductive in the strategic sense, in Desportes’ opinion.
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The MQ-9 Reaper, when compared with the 1995-vintage Predator, represents a major evolution of the unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV.
At five tons gross weight, the Reaper is four times heavier than the Predator. Its size — 36 feet long, with a 66-foot wingspan — is comparable to the profile of the Air Force's workhorse A-10 attack plane. It can fly twice as fast and twice as high as the Predator. Most significantly, it carries many more weapons.
UNDER THE RADAR: Air Force ramps up in Iraq
While the Predator is armed with two Hellfire missiles, the Reaper can carry 14 of the air-to-ground weapons — or four Hellfires and two 500-pound bombs.
"It's not a recon squadron," Col. Joe Guasella, operations chief for the Central Command's air component, said of the Reapers. "It's an attack squadron, with a lot more kinetic ability."
"Kinetic" — Pentagon argot for destructive power — is what the Air Force had in mind when it christened its newest robot plane with a name associated with death.
"The name Reaper captures the lethal nature of this new weapon system," Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, said in announcing the name last September.
General Atomics of San Diego has built at least nine of the MQ-9s thus far, at a cost of $69 million per set of four aircraft, with ground equipment.
The Air Force's 432nd Wing, a UAV unit formally established on May 1, is to eventually fly 60 Reapers and 160 Predators. The numbers to be assigned to Iraq and Afghanistan will be classified.
The Reaper is expected to be flown as the Predator is — by a two-member team of pilot and sensor operator who work at computer control stations and video screens that display what the UAV "sees." Teams at Balad, housed in a hangar beside the runways, perform the takeoffs and landings, and similar teams at Nevada's Creech Air Force Base, linked to the aircraft via satellite, take over for the long hours of overflying the Iraqi landscape.
American ground troops, equipped with laptops that can download real-time video from UAVs overhead, "want more and more of it," said Maj. Chris Snodgrass, the Predator squadron commander here.
The Reaper's speed will help. "Our problem is speed," Snodgrass said of the 140-mph Predator. "If there are troops in contact, we may not get there fast enough. The Reaper will be faster and fly farther."
