"Paul F Austin" wrote...

The various flavors of Mav already give us a linkless approach to precision
kill of moving targets but despite being in production forever, the cost is
too high (and requires good visibility).

Add to that the various laser-guided munitions already available, either with
direct target designation from the ground or indirect target ID (traditional
9-line brief, "100 meters south of the smoke", etc...), and there are avariety
of "linkless" options to terminal guidance. Each has its advantages and
limitations. I suspect there will be an analogous mix in the future as well.


AMSTE uses RADAR as the primary sensor and the link allows weapons release
above the cloud deck. That may be one of the drivers for the overall
architecture (which knowledge I've derived entirely from reading AvWeek and
IDR).

Whether CAS strikes will be allowed without visual confirmation of FLOT and
target is a doctrinal issue but a lot will depend on the development
trajectory of Blue Force Tracking (BFT) as well as of the AMSTE technology
set..

That (visual confirmation) will likely be a primary issue for the foreseeable
future. During early development, the USMC was VERY skeptical of JSOW (then
AIWS) as a CAS weapon, even with uplinked target coordinates, because of lack of
confidence in its CEP (especially with a CBU loadout), the long weapon time of
flight, and inability to abort the weapon once launched. Since CAS is by
definition conducted very close to friendly forces, it will take a major
doctrinal change to embrace non-visual target ID and weapon designation.


It seems to me that a major advantage of a data linked approach to CAS
strikes, whether RADAR as a primary sensor or not is the ability to update
aimpoints while the weapon is in flight. That's not a new thing, being the
way AGM-130 works. Data links are becoming ubiquitous around the battlefield
these days. In the case of a command link to a weapon in flight, the link is
geometrically resistant to jamming in addition to the more conventional AJ
techniques.

It will be interesting when the data link controller is in the hands of the FAC
on the ground!