LOCAAS

Just me, but in order for this thing to survive the well known thin budgets, all services are going to have to show hard, determined, interest in it. Which may not be a bad thing because you can use it so so many ways on so many platforms. While maybe not as slick and certainly not apples to apples, I would rather see something like JCM survive the competition for ever shrinking funds. If I want a meat eating tank killer, we have CBU-105, SFW BLU-108B. Again not a real apples to apples comparison but certainly, like JCM, steps into some of the LOCASS killing ability. I think LOCASS is very useful, however again here, something like SDB and SDB II will also kill some of the targets that LOCASS was designed for. It would be nice if we had funds for all the neat gadgets, unfortunately we have less and less funds for cool stuff. Basic war sustainment is taking up a few colors of money that you don’t really hear much about. Congress just spent 2 billion on buying 10 more C-17s. Something we have NO need for. The only purpose for that purchase out of the blue was for political graft as it is an election year. Nothing more. There was no need. Figure that one out. 2 Billion could have been better used on any number of other things.

Or you’ll set the GPS/INS in LOCAAS to only allow it to attack targets within a pre-defined geographical area – as is already being done with the latest HARMs and for similar reasons.

Ofcourse LOCAAS has a DL and with that the version can communicate with the network for IFF ( w/o using man aswell) which over the years will get better and better , anyhow if there are 2 tanks in a given area ( no front line) then the weapon of choice will most likely be something else ( JCM/Hellfire , SDB etc) .

what do you mean differetiate b/w the two?? If you mean how will it pick a S-300 SAM site from a army utility pickup?? that will be with the LADAR seeker and the software recoganition system/systems furthermore there is a 2 way datalink and the person incharge ( back seet of a launch aircraft for example) can get a feed to choose the target himself . Also he can make the LOCAAS loiter in that area for sometime waiting for a Target Of Opp. to pop up .

The example I gave was two opposing armies equipped with the same model main battle tank and how a fully automated LOCAAS would have a hard time differentiating between the two MBTs., hence the need for a man in the loop.

what do you mean differetiate b/w the two?? If you mean how will it pick a S-300 SAM site from a army utility pickup?? that will be with the LADAR seeker and the software recoganition system/systems furthermore there is a 2 way datalink and the person incharge ( back seet of a launch aircraft for example) can get a feed to choose the target himself . Also he can make the LOCAAS loiter in that area for sometime waiting for a Target Of Opp. to pop up .

Given the proliferation of weapons, its easy to imagine a scenario where protagonists buy their weapons from the same supplier. So if nation A is fighting nation B and both use the same model tanks, and say the US enters the fray on the side of nation A, how would a LOCAAS or similar type weapon differentiate between the two?

One wonders if the day will ever come that humans will relegte total resposnibility for attack desicions to a robot, making the man in the loop expendable?

I’m waiting for a megalomaniac industrialist to stage an armed coup straight off the production line with future robot weapons 😮 😀

One wonders if the day will ever come that humans will relegte total resposnibility for attack desicions to a robot, making the man in the loop
expendable?

.. LOCAAS has been a purely experimental project, but the Air Force is now interested in moving to a production weapon. However, senior USAF officials are not happy with the autonomous “search and destroy” concept, since it creates too much of risk of friendly-fire casualties or collateral damage to civilian targets. A production LOCAAS will still have a search capability, but it will also have a radio datalink to keep a “man in the loop” who would determine if the target should be attacked. The Air Force has been trying to move the program out of the demonstration phase and wants to select a vendor for full development in 2006. Lockheed Martin is unsurprisingly regarded as having an advantage in the competition.

LOCAAS still appears on the Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control website http://www.missilesandfirecontrol.com/our_products/strikeweapons/LOCAAS/product-locaas.html

SMACM http://www.missilesandfirecontrol.com/our_products/strikeweapons/SMACM/product-SMACM.html

Boeing Dominator/Persistent Munition Technology Demonstrator http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2006/q3/060718d_nr.html

Info on LOCAAS and Dominator here http://www.vectorsite.net/twbombb.html

SMACM is something that is completely different and is a cruise missile which shares some technology but other then that they are different. SMACM has about the double the range then the longest ranged LOCAAS at 200nm ( locaas at 100nm) here is something that will help you guys –

http://rapidshare.de/files/30812531/10692.pdf.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/30812640/2995.pdf.html

As per my knowledge the LOCAAS is very much alive and still on budget to cost around 35K $$ which is extremely cheap for the capability it offers ( even a half a million dollar JASSM doesnt offer similar capability) , the AF wasnt too comfortable with the autonomous only mode as they feered friendly fire therefore added a datalink which can potentially make it a little more expensive .

Can someone like ELP clarify wether this program is still alive , and if so what is its status . And what happened to the boeing Dominator .

Wasn’t that project replaced by SMACM?

Story about that should be somewhere in Signal magazine.
www.afcea.org/signal

SMACM is a bigger, longer-ranged version.. don’t think its a replacement though.

Wasn’t that project replaced by SMACM?

Story about that should be somewhere in Signal magazine.
www.afcea.org/signal

I’m guessing 16 total.. 4 LOCAAS per SUU-64. 20 x LOCAAS would require 5 x SUU-64 w/c is an odd number of dispensers. Just a guess though.