if i remember correctly it was the F-117B project right ?
btw how much Kg do you think painting RAM on these missiles would weight

Apparently yes, it was the F-117B:
http://www.f-117a.com/Variants.html

I don’t really know, my guess would be not that much.

I think carrying the 2000lbs JDAM externally with RAM paint on it wouldn’t have been a bad idea for the JSF. As a fighter in the medium weight class, the JSF needed a relatively narrow fuselage for supersonic speed. The 2000lbs JDAM requirement turned the JSF into a fatass. Anyways…

So the technology has been mature for close to 15 years. It is disappointing that the AMRAAM has not been upgraded with it since, I guess the throttleable ramjet would help for end-game maneuvering against fighters equipped with thrust vectoring.

IMO one of the big mistake of the pentagon was to continue with the ATF program in 1991. The cold war had ended so the need for a high end fighter was not that great. And they should have predicted the high cost of the F-22 airframes, and that it was not going to be built in large numbers.

What they should have done instead is immediately start a common CTOL/CV program of a single engine stealth plane re-using the YF-22 technologies. A mini F-22 of sorts. They should immediately have worked on an F135 type engine, and used the F100-232 or F110-132 for the test planes and the first variants. It would have been faster and more maneuvrable than the F-35.

The Navy would just have had to wait until 2005-2006 for its variant and would have bought a few more F/A-18Cs in the meantime, possibly with CFTs . The CFTs had been studied as a possible upgrade and honestly the super hornets block I are not that much better than an upgraded F-18C would have been.

For the STOVL, they should have upgraded the harrier with supersonic capabilities if possible.

The USAF/USN would each have around 400 stealth planes by now, and they would be coming off the production line at 150+ per year as we speak.

And another mistake they made was to miss the opportunity to field a lot of AESA radars on the fighters. The F-16 block 60 radar should have been developped in a way that it could have upgraded easily the existing fleet. They should also have tried to re-use the radar technology of the stealth fighter radar on the F-15 and F-18 as early as 2005.

Not concrete just rumours. There is a large hole to be plugged in European SEAD capability, so it seems a logical step.

That would make sense but I am under the impression that killing a radar is pretty hard. Using expensive missiles like a meteor may not be the most cost effective way to do it. It would need a really good ability to find it when it is turned off.

Meteor ARM/JDRADM would be my option but I know a T-3 is already being developed.

I have never seen anything concrete about an ARM meteor. Have you? As for the JDRADM/T-3, hopefully they will find funds to continue the R&D.

An ARM mode for a BVR missile would be a good feature. The enemy plane would be paranoid about using its radar and guiding its missiles, which would reduce their pk.

The two programmes are running in parallel, and both involve rebuilding existing rounds. There are no new-build HARM variants.

I summarised both schemes back in posting 250 of this thread.

The HSCM project retains the existing passive-radar seeker.

The USAF doesn’t want to spend too much on those upgrade apparently. I guess they’d rather spend their cash on the next generation missile supposed to be a hybrid ARM/AAM.

The problem with AARGM is that the missile doesn’t have an ability to loiter. It is very fast so I doubt it can really search and destroy unless it has relatively precise coordinates of the target.

AGM-88E (AARGM) already has GPS/INS.

http://dtic.mil/ndia/2009gunmissile/AARGM.pdf

Yes, but AARGM is not the same as HSCM. From what I understand, HSCM is a more simple upgrade to the HARMs already in service. It doesn’t have the terminal seeker, just a more accurate navigation system and the ability to download the GPS coordinates of the targets obtained via triangulating by the aircraft.

Possibly, I guess it does provide an ESM back-up. Question wrt LRASM. Could it be used in a SEAD/DEAD role given the integrated ESM?

There is an upgrade program for the HARM called HSCM to give it INS/GPS guidance. I guess the 2+ aircraft would triangulate accurately and download the target coordinates to the missile.

http://rpdefense.over-blog.com/tag/hcsm/

As for LRASM, I don’t know but it it optimized against ships.

They should have some sort of standard interface to integrate any sensor on any missile, with a plug-in software API for the missile manufacturer. Say for instance a JASSM-ER used in search and destroy mode with an SDB II seeker.

Concerning the HARM, its result so far have been quite poor. I am afraid in a war with WP forces it could have lead to a disaster. After a few days of operations, US planes would have run out of missiles, then the enemy radars would not have needed to shutdown and a lot of planes would have been shot down. Hopefully the ALARM would have faired better.