Monday, July 27, 2009

Monday Militaria: The Army's VLS

Among the survivors of FCS’s collapse is the billion-dollar Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System — the so-called “Missile in a Box.” This impressive bit of tech passed an important test at the White Sands test range in New Mexico this week, when one of its 100-pound missiles flew five miles and destroyed a T-72 tank traveling in a convoy of several other vehicles.

Missiles in a Box is a collaboration between Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, doesn’t look like much. Popular Mechanics compared the 1.5-ton launcher to a “Port-O-Potty-size crate.” The individual missiles are packed 15-to-a-box and can be left lying around on the ground, carted around on flat-bed trucks or even installed on the Navy’s shore-hugging Littoral Combat Ships. The launcher stays logged onto a network via the newfangled, “universal” Joint Tactical Radio System. Soldiers, drones or choppers send a target’s coordinates to the launcher, out pops a missile (or five, or 15). The missile gets an update while en route, in case the target is moving — and can even pass back pictures of the bad guys. Each projectile can home in with laser, infrared or GPS guidance, and “dial” its warhead to kill armored or unarmored targets.


There are two ways I'd use this for medium and heavy forces. Either I'd go with a cavalry tank or I'd go with a dedicated carrier. Each has its pluses and minuses.

The cavalry tank is one I've been kicking around for while and have referenced before on the blog in my spotty militaria posts. The idea is that you have a two man crew tank with an unmanned gun pod. However, in the back is a modular 'cargo' bay. There you could place mission or role specific payloads. The first would be a infantry carrying pod: a four man rifle team. This gets infantry right there with the tank as is needed almost always and overcomes the maintenance issues with having only a two man tank crew. Potentially this could reduce the number of vehicle types in a combat unit: less IFV/APCs. The second pod would be a command pod where a company or higher commander would work coordinating the unit. The third pod would be a high energy laser for AA protection (and even sniper and mortar for the matter). The final variant would slap in a pair of the 'Missiles in a Box' in the tail. A tank company would have 13 infantry carrying tanks, 2 HEL tanks, 2 MiB tanks, and 1 command tank. This would mean 60 missiles from MiB, 52 infantrymen, 2 weapons class HELs, and 20 main guns could wreck havoc on whatever the company/troop ran across. Further modules could be developed and funded independently. However, while the idea has very obvious appeal, there's an issue that replacing everything at once has failed the US Army twice now: the current FCS fiasco and the 1990s HFM program as well.

An alternative to would be to introduce a carrier vehicle - an unmanned carrier vehicle - that would do nothing more than lug around easily replaced modules of MiB. 6 MiB sets to a carrier. If two carriers are attached to a battlion, that would mean a single battlion would have 180 missiles to lob at whatever got in their way. Just program them to follow along the battlion. This is much more likely financially and technically. It might even be a good idea given the cavalry tank program anyways as a battlion level assett. You might even be able to recycle old IFV/AFVs. hmm.


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