The Potential Weaknes Of The SFW

[butch4343]

Hi all,

I have just watched a TV program , covering the development of the Sensor Fused Weapon CBU. Whilst the program was designed for the masses and didnt go in to any great technical details. The premise of the program was that a single bomb could strike an armoured column and take out around 40 MBTs or vehicles, this is a massive leap in capabiltity compared with the older "dumb" CBUs, a B1B load of thirty could strike 1200 armoured vehicles., however how if more than one unit t a time is dropped wouldnt the sensors re-attack previously destroyed targets? wouldnt this dramatically drop the kill ratio of the SFW? Or does this mean only a single SFW can be dropped per pass, with no re-attack possible until the armoured column clears the previous weapons footprint?

Over to you ladies and gents.

 

[Chrom]

Dont know about GBU - but 80x Smerch cluster warheads used cooperative target recognition. Means they exchanged information about what target each warhead engage. Most likely modern USA GBU uses the same aproach.

 

[butch4343]

Thanks for that chrom,

Does the smerch system have acapabilty for multiple attacks then , as it would seem it may suffer from the same problem if the column is struck by more than one weapon. I am also curious now as to how the submunitions "talk" to one another before detonating as well.

 

[Chrom]

Thanks for that chrom,

Does the smerch system have acapabilty for multiple attacks then , as it would seem it may suffer from the same problem if the column is struck by more than one weapon. I am also curious now as to how the submunitions "talk" to one another before detonating as well.

Huh, after searching throught i didnt found proof about cooperative target recognition for Smerch warheads. Allthought i remember as i readed it somewhere. So its looks like i was wrong. Or may be there is same other sort of cooperation between Smerch missiles prior to warheads release.

 

[ELP]

We have used BLU-108b SFW ( sensor fused weapon ) in the form of CBU-105
wind corrected munitions container. Pretty amazing product. Better yet it worked in combat pretty good. Vehicles in the open are pretty much taken care of. the WCMC gives the CBU some stand off range too. WCMC is INS only with no GPS corrections, but for the flight time, good enough accuracy before it breaks open and releases the SFW's.

Video here: (must have Quicktime to view it) Pretty educational.
http://www.textrondefense.com/multimedia/sfw_2003.htm

CBU-105 will internal carry on JSF also.

The "political weakness" for BLU-108b is highly debatable. SFW is a smart submuntion and even in OIF the peaceniks couldn't find duds at an SFW site. Part of BLU-108bs design is to destruct if it doesn't find a target in x amount of time. Dumb submunitions are of course the problem and have a high dud rate. A few of our troops were taken out by duds long after an Army MLRS attack near Baghdad in 2003. The submuntions are cute and yellow and in one case a kid picked one up to take it over to two U.S soldiers and it went off killing her and a Army guy and wounding another. So not such a hot weapon to use, as clean up of duds is a pain.