recoverable Tomahawk

The Tomahawk missile, which is actually not a missile at all but a autonomously piloted aircraft powered by a turbofan engine, costs one million dollars a piece. It was originally designed in the cold war to carry a nuke into russia, and for that use I can see it as expendable. But now to use this missile for tactical strikes in regional conflicts, I cant really understand how it has not been modified to be recoverable since these engagements can last a long period of time. It would be easy to make it recoverable both in land and sea.

A CAV existed/exist in such a profile….where the Pilot is strapped on to the rocket and carries the warload, uses it and finally lands with dragchute. Its called the MiG-21. 😀

A few things like slicing off the main wings, tailfin, addition of two control surfaces, removal of the Pilot etc….the MiG-21 is almost a Yakhot/Brahmos in profile.

I have read the whole of thread & imo the parent owener of this thread want something like this :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikara_%28missile%29

However; for this to occur for Tomahawk the return flight alone would make it much bigger (~thereby increasing its cost). Also this could jeoparadise the ony edge it has over even the modern UCAVs also known as steath

tsz52- I cant figure how youre calculating the economics. Yes what you say it true…to a point, that there is increased costs by making a tomahawk recoverable, but those costs pay for themselves immediately, and only improve over longer use. Lets take the current Libyan no-fly-zone as an example. The US and UK navies fired 100 or so tomahawks in the first day of action. At $1M a piece they expended $100 million dollars just on hardware, this money is just gone, its not sustaining operation of anything, just down the drain.

You have to look at the big picture- A- what would the value of a manned strike package, that could accomplish the same task be(sunk costs, operational costs, risks to aircrews) and B- the value of the target. Obviously, you don’t want to waste a $1m weapon on a $50k target, but that’s not what TLAMS are being fired at.

Range would hardly be a factor at all in the Libyan operation, Im sure these ships were just a couple of hundred miles off shore, the tomahawks could have been flown all the way back to Italy for land recovery.

For a recoverable TLAM to make sense, it’d have to have at least 2X the range, of the current version, or you’d have to put expensive hardware at much more risk(i.e. ships/subs), by being twice as close to the targets, in order to reach them.

For a smaller country that both are unlikely to ever use’em, and are likely to have their air bases destroyed right from start, cruise missiles are both cheaper and have a higher chance of being put to good use before destroyed then UCAV in need of base can hope for.

The biggest risk of getting shot down is on the way in, the defenders missiles should be expended after that, so that favor cheaper one-way missiles.

How about having each cruise missile carry a MALD and a simple RWR, ?
if under attack, have them launch the MALD.

By the way, there’s a similar idea that I’ve been aimlessly bouncing around my dome, but haven’t done any real work on yet, including them nasty numbers – be nice to see what folks think.:)

Instead of a standardised cruise (which will generally turn out be more than you actually need in some respect when you fire it) in your VLS silos (so you’re probably carrying more than you’ll actually fire), you have a smaller number of fairly common but modular cruise missiles.

They’re semi-LO and share a lot of commonality with the air launched version – clearly I’m thinking more SCALP than Tom as a starting point.

They’re fired from fairly easily reloadable tubes (good luck reloading a Tom into a VLS at sea), and ideally cold/soft launched by piston (EDIT: More probably compressed air), so you don’t need the booster. You can trade fuel against payload. Maybe boosters can be added to increase range where necessary – it’s modular.

It’s recovered by medium helo (so your average decent-sized combatant can launch and recover, rather than needing an amphib around for heavy lift helo), or by wire/net on an extendable boom by the ship, if the airframe is sturdy enough and it’s light enough post-sortie.

It can be turned around and reloaded by the firing ship, to minimise infrastructural burdens.

The launch tubes will take up space, but you can have a much smaller and lighter VLS nest (far shorter silos if otherwise you only wanted something of Aster 15/30 length). Perhaps larger GP ships could use the tubes to launch heavy torpedoes, or recon/C4ISTAR UAVs too – it’s a nice multi-purpose launcher.

Dunno….

Arquebus: In all honesty, most of the above cost points apply even moreso to the uber-UCAVs – how many cheaper (than Toms) munitions do you need to drop before you’ve paid for the entire programme+lifecycle costs? It’s lots and lots: they defo have their place (persistance and cheaper (in all ways) than manned planes), but being cheaper than expendable cruise missiles isn’t in the running… again barring full-on, endless war.

Costs aside, the main reason that they’re not operational yet is that there are some heinous technical issues to be resolved yet – but plenty of posts out there discussing this, so I won’t warm it over again.

Regards.

tsz52- Overall your points are valid and I agree with you, making recoverable tomahawks would probably end up being more trouble than they are worth for a navy. But the point remains that tomahawks should only be used for “real wars”, ie against targets of high tactical value, and not in a sustained ground attack role that should be handled by UCAVs dedicated to that role. I guess Im just surprised that something like the X-45 hasnt already entered service for these kind of attacks rather than continuing to use rather expesnive TLAMs.

Arquebus: OK, I typed out a monster post, but back of the envelope approximations seem too embarrassing to share – try it yourself with your own envelope and see what you get:-

Hellish black hole of money-devouring doom that is procuring a new system these days, guaranteed!

What do you do with the old missiles that have been paid for already? The $100m for launching 100 regular Toms at Libya disappeared forever when the missiles were bought, back in the day, not fired now [BTW, range might not have mattered here, but all future engagements won’t be of this type – range really does matter for a cruise missile.].

How much more does the Tom II cost by virtue of its being better- and more sturdily-engineered to be re-useable?

How much do the expendable bits (booster and payload) cost? – you’re not getting them back.

How many spare sets of expendable bits do you carry in inventory, and where do you keep them?

How much is the recovery method? – helos cost tens of thousands of $ per flight hour.

How much is maintenance? Stealth retouching? Fatigue and replacing expensive components? Can some random seaman who would have been aboard anyway loafing about, laughing in the face of ‘optimal manning’, really do this, or do you need additional mechanics, who need specific training?

Is this whole turnaround accomplished on the ship, including reloading these beasts back into the VLS silos, at sea?! Extra cost and complexity and compromising of the ship’s design – I’d guess not but…

… if not then you can’t really benefit from reducing missiles purchased too much, since each group of combatants need a certain number of cruise missiles per deployment.

Plus fewer missiles bought increases unit price.

Which of these costs are up-front one-offs, and which (infrastructure, logistics, wages, storage space oportunity cost) keep needing to be paid, year upon year, whether the missiles are ever fired or not; which apply only after the missile is fired and recovered?

How likely are you to lose a missile, and how many shots does each afford before it gets written-off?

Suppose you decide that being re-useable, you can halve the number of missiles you would otherwise buy – say 2000 units plus 2000 expendable bits sets. Big saving, but nowhere near offsetting the costs mentioned – each is still more expensive than a throw-away Tom, up-front and in accumulating, infrastructural costs.

You sort of get your money back by firing and re-using them (which won’t make it more likely that they’ll be inappropriately used than an expensive one-shot missile would, obviously…:rolleyes:), but only by actually spending further money (expendable bits and turnaround).

Killer is that though your (say) 50 Tom IIs fired twice against Libya have started to recoup some drops in the ocean of the expenses of the entire system (assuming most are successfully recovered and turned-around), in comparison to 100 regular Toms, your 1,950 Tom IIs that have never been fired have yet to do so.

As with the ‘cheaper’ uber-UCAVs, you kind of save money by spending vast amounts extra of it (which presupposes that you’ll have it then) but you need to find yourself in the happy circumstance where you can destroy a country every few years, or WWIII or something (but without it damaging your economy/infrastructure too much) to justify that many launches over the weapon system’s life.

Lockheed Martin’s Cormorant is a proposal for a submarine launched recoverable UAV. Its designed to fit in a trident launch tube. Wikipedia‘s article.

tsz52- I cant figure how youre calculating the economics. Yes what you say it true…to a point, that there is increased costs by making a tomahawk recoverable, but those costs pay for themselves immediately, and only improve over longer use. Lets take the current Libyan no-fly-zone as an example. The US and UK navies fired 100 or so tomahawks in the first day of action. At $1M a piece they expended $100 million dollars just on hardware, this money is just gone, its not sustaining operation of anything, just down the drain. If the tomahawks were recoverable there would be huge savings, it would be simply a matter of rearming the missle and reloading into the ships, no money lost at all, just normal operating costs of ship crew that would be spent anyway. Range would hardly be a factor at all in the Libyan operation, Im sure these ships were just a couple of hundred miles off shore, the tomahawks could have been flown all the way back to Italy for land recovery.

Distiller- Your UCAV in flight refueling links look interesting, but I honestly cant see the need for in flight recovery at all. It would be a needless added expense to have manned aircraft whos only purpose is to launch and recover UCAVs when it would be so much simpler to just let the UCAVs take off and land on their own.

It’d be useful for some robot vehicles, but it’s always the problem with ‘cheap, re-usable’ sytems: Add all of the re-use costs, lots up front and some logistical ones that cost year after year come rain or shine, and they only become cheaper upon being pretty heavily used.

For sure, the future is one of dropping bombs on everything everywhere so cool, but the problem with the ‘you’ve gotta spend money to save money, innit!’ approach is that it presupposes that you will have that ready money in the future – could easily still be half a mill per shot (from second shot onwards, increasing with wear), when everything’s factored in.

For a Tomahawk II-type your main problems are that it has to fit into existing VLS silos, but re-useability costs volume, so you have to reduce useful performance in some way (effective range most probably); and getting back out might be more tricky than going in, so you need decent LO but it must be low-maintenance, even after repeated launch/recovery cycles.

And again, if God forbid you never fire it at anything (or successfully recover them in adequate numbers), then your cost-reduction plan has simply added billions and logistical complications over and above the expendable missiles’ cost (which will probably have the higher performance too).

[Thus speaks the limitless wisdom of the back of the envelope….:D]

Distiller: Great links! I shall have a good peruse….

2002:
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/movie/AAR/HTML/EM-0053-01.html

2006:
http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2006/q4/061127b_nr.html

2007:
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/AFRL_And_Boeing_Demonstrate_That_UAVs_Can_Perform_Automated_Aerial_Refueling_999.html

2010:
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/49M-for-Boeing-to-Advance-UAV-Aeral-Refueling-05168/

2011:
http://www.irconnect.com/noc/press/pages/news_releases.html?d=218140

and

2010:
http://www.sikorsky.com/About+Sikorsky/News/Press+Details?pressvcmid=b9475e46e1ce9210VgnVCM1000004f62529fRCRD

Taking robot ammo or an UAV back aboard wouldn’t be too different. Of course it has to be designed for it from ground up, with a little more maneuverability and smooth responsiveness. Instability around the aircraft could be an issue to some degree but basically it’s the reverse of an ordnance drop.

If you look at MALD and its variants, it would be gold to take them back aboard.

In flight recovery as in vertical ejector rack (= pylon) that not only drops things but is also capable to take them aboard again. Without any other action by the pilot than pressing the right button.

How to actually do it? Probably some kind of miniature robot grappling device which pulls in the object over the last foot or so. It needs precise 4D awareness and near-field communication to get the robot/UAV to fly into the right position. Basically it’s the same system as for automated aerial refueling or other automated formation flying projects, as done by NASA, AFRL, Boeing, or Sikorsky.

I cant see that happening, especially not a full size UCAV. In flight refueling is difficult enough flying for trained pilots, but for a UCAV, no way. If the UCAV weight 1000 lbs or less, then maybe, but even then it would be a dangerous operation with the danger of in flight collision or the UCAV becoming dangerously unstable . The only plausible in flight recovery I could see is a tomahawk size UCAV falling by parachute and then have a heavy lift helicopter swoop down with a line and hook to catch the parachute cables. Even then that would be pretty squirrely.

Thanks, tsz52, yes.

In flight recovery as in vertical ejector rack (= pylon) that not only drops things but is also capable to take them aboard again. Without any other action by the pilot than pressing the right button.

How to actually do it? Probably some kind of miniature robot grappling device which pulls in the object over the last foot or so. It needs precise 4D awareness and near-field communication to get the robot/UAV to fly into the right position. Basically it’s the same system as for automated aerial refueling or other automated formation flying projects, as done by NASA, AFRL, Boeing, or Sikorsky.

But it’s not limited to tactical aircraft or bomb-sized objects. A robot arm in the belly of a bomber or the cargo hold of a cargo aircraft are also imaginable. That could then be used to refuel and re-arm and UAV in flight, maybe even do minor standard maintenance.

Can’t speak for Distiller but I guess he means literally ‘in-flight recovery’: it’s recovered (think ‘captured’ really) by something else whilst flying.

Could be by something also flying, or the arrestor wire (or even net or something) on an extendable boom that some of the smaller UAVs have already been recovered with (the UAV has a suitable hook to catch on the wire), including on ships.

Dunno….

Distiller- what exactly do you mean by “in flight” recovery? I take that to mean the UCAV lands itself like a normal airplane. Current UCAVs in service are pretty much all surveillance, most are so small they dont need a runway. In fact a lot of these surveillance drones are so small that they are not designed by engineers but rather by expert model airplane designers. If you want to talk about full size UCAVs that are meant for strike role, I think it is best to keep the size down to that of the tomahawk. A larger UCAV will need a runway, and considering that there are hundreds of military air crashes every month all over the world by highly trained personal, then I think we will see a lot more crashes when you try to mix UCAVs in airspace and airfields with manned military aircraft.

Generally speaking I think *in-flight* recovery (not dropping into the sea) of robots and other unmanned air vehicles will be very important in the future, kind of the wholy grail, especially for non-effectors like sensor or decoy/jammer carriers.

In case of the Tomahawk, or any other existing robot, it’s not possible. Such a capability has to be designed into a robot/UAV from the very beginning.

With all the talk about UCAVs as the future of air power, doesnt it seem strange that the Tomahawk missile be destroyed when delivering its munitions instead of dropping them and fly back to be recovered? The Tomahawk missile, which is actually not a missile at all but a autonomously piloted aircraft powered by a turbofan engine, costs one million dollars a piece. It was originally designed in the cold war to carry a nuke into russia, and for that use I can see it as expendable. But now to use this missile for tactical strikes in regional conflicts, I cant really understand how it has not been modified to be recoverable since these engagements can last a long period of time. It would be easy to make it recoverable both in land and sea. By land it would be slowed down with a drogue chute and then a larger paraglider chute would deploy which would give it steerable landing. At see all that would be needed is to make systems compartments water tight, and a drogue chute to slow its impact into the sea.

Not worth the effort. If you want to drop bombs cheaply there are a lot of existing solutions for that requirement. If you want a highly capable cruise missile to strike targets, the use a TLAM. But making the TLAM into yet another cheap way to drop bombs is not a good idea! There is also no real incentive to use the TLAM design anyway, its a pretty poor airframe design for the role, and it would need a new flight control system.