That reminded me...

Hopefully Blighty's F-35s have the necessary...

[1]https://www.theregister.com/2017/02/17/lynx_wildcat_has_no_tactical_data_link_royal_navy/

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2017/02/17/lynx_wildcat_has_no_tactical_data_link_royal_navy/

Fruit and Nutcase,

All F35s have got Link 16 (NATO standard) and also their own even more capable tactical data network, MADL, which means they can inter-operate with all other F35s, plus a few other assets. I think the B2, B21 (when it's built) and the most up-to-date Aegis-equipped ships. Which means the ship can give targetting information for the F35s missiles - or vice-versa. Although that can be done with other means, the UK have shot down a target missile with a Typhoon where the targetting was cued by a Type 45 Destroyer in excercises in the North Sea.

They were still pissing around and testing datalinks for the Wildcat - they may have fitted them already, the MoD are often not clear about this sort of thing. I'm not sure why it's taken so long. Merlin has it, but that does anti-submarine work, which is much more complicated.

I briefly wondered if the RN had outsourced naming duties to El Reg building on such greats as LOHAN and PARIS.

Alas the lack of a terminal S robs us of this possibility.

Coat because ... whoops, I did it again.

Ah yes, but as the article notes, Spear is merely one part of SPEAR, so one might also say that this specific variant is the Select Precision Effects At Range Spear...

Nah, El Reg would've only agreed if the test firing had been in Brittany.

No mention of how much these things will cost - I guess it's in the "if you have to ask" bracket?

They're supposed to be relatively cheap.

Brimstone is supposedly under $200,000. Full-fat cruise missiles tend to cost at least a million. Something mid-range like Spear 3 should be somewhere in between. The nice thing about the "spiral development" of families of missiles which the UK (and much of Europe) have been doing with missiles for the last decade or two is that there's some quite nice savings in there. Work done for the seeker head of Brimstone is I think going into Spear 3.

Spear 3 will also have another version called Spear-EW which is a decoy missile with the same technology as the anti-radar decoys on Typhoon and F35. They're also using the engines from pre-existing missiles. Finally, if we can get other people to order them, they get even cheaper.

Brimstone already has a database on board of target vehicles. So you can tell it to go to an area and hit all tanks if finds, and if no tanks go for IFVs. It can tell friendly from enemy. Or at least different types (Ukraine must have to be careful using it as they use Russian/Soviet designed vehicles). Brimstone can be programmed to delay one missile's attack on a target to allow another to destroy it, and will then only engage if that attack fails. Spear 3 is supposed to be capable of swarming - the missiles split the targets between them and so can attack all simultaneously. Presumably you can program a reserve to hang back and hit any survivors.

If anybody's learning anything from Ukraine it is that cost has a quality all its own.

- Ukraine manages to axe costly, costly, Russian assets with relatively cheap homegrown gear

- Modern wars need a a lot of ammo.

- At economic parity, it is a mug's game to be shooting down $50k drones with $1m interceptors.

- Swarming is a thing

In all sincerity, why would the missille need datalink and ability to abort in the terminal phase?

Assuming the airframe isn't just expendable (piloted or not), that means splitting operator attention from navigation + combat maneuvers to supervise the new-fangled missile's flight to target. So you get tunnel vision and red team throws a SAM - boom aircraft removed from existence.

Close air support / counter insurgency warfare.

Friendlies or civilians move into the area of effect / danger zone, so you abort the missile before impact.

Not all military operations are against an enemy with full air-defence capabilities, plus as the article notes, this thing can be launched from 100km away, so what was a good launch when it was launched might not be once it gets to the target area.

"Not all military operations are against an enemy with full air-defence capabilities"

True. Like the Houthis in Yemen, who just expelled an USS Destroyer from their area.

another advantage would be sending back sensor data from the missile to its controller ~100 mile down range. up to date intel is always of use....

One would hope the datalink capability either allows for other friendly resources (AWACS, JSTARS, another F-35 further back from the front line etc.) to piggy-back on the datalink between the missile and launching aircraft so that the pilot of the latter doesn't have to do all the hard work themselves, or preferably allows for those resources to simply take over once the missile has left the launch rail such that the launching aircraft need not be involved at all in the remainder of the missiles flight.

>One would hope the datalink capability either allows for other friendly resources

Your call is very important to us, please stay on the line.

Surely it would be more environmentally friendly if the cruise missile had longer range?

If the pilot could strike the target from 1000km, they wouldn't have use fuel guzzling plane for 900km to come closer to the target and then go back 900km. Plus if the pilot comes too close to enemy air defences they could find themselves ejecting from the seat and even worse annihilating the carbon footprint took to get them to that position.

Then you must think why cruise missile is not using solar power or other form of clean energy or if the targeting system has some provisions to alter the course or beam form the explosion in case there was a rare specie of bat or other protected creature being in danger.

You're trolling, but in a fun and enjoyable way. And you made me chortle, so have an upvote.

Nice stuff elser , and that can be built on!

To work towards global net zero - let's face it, we're all in it together - supply with ordnance and get a hot line going. Then instead of launching and using all this messy, green house producing tech, just give 'em a call and get them to detonate in-situ. Eliminates that 100Km of flying and also the ordnance fuel. Same damage, greener planet!

> just give 'em a call and get them to detonate in-situ

Back in the day when Polaris was going to be replaced by the somewhat $$$$ Trident. There was a suggestion in the blowing-things-up-biggly research establishment that if you were at all serious about this nuclear deterrent stuff you could simply bury large number of bombs across Berkshire and blow them up in-situ.

In the grand scheme of USA-USSR thermonuclear war in Europe it wouldn't make much odds to the residents of the home counties and would be much cheaper and easier.

Hang on though, you've forgotten to take the carbon footprint of the cargo aircraft required to deliver it to them in the first place... No, what you need is to hand over the IP of your latest weapon system to your opponent, so that they can simply build them themselves using local facilities, thus minimising the carbon footprint of delivering said weapons to where you'd like them to be.

The fact that, in return, your enemies would be expected to hand over the IP of *their* latest and greatest is then a bonus feature of this plan - you get to blow them up without having to spend oodles of carbon credits in the process, and you also get to learn about their latest designs.

Anyone reading this who's about to now go - "ah, but can't they just bl..." will shortly be receiving a knock on the door from their regional security services, because we simply can't be having anyone daring to question the impenetrably secure logic of this master plan...

Better yet, just do it all in simulation and the projected casualties can just make their own way to the extermination chamber and be disposed of cleanly and bulk.

[1]Star Trek TNG Season 1: A Taste of Armageddon

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon

Awww, the only reason you beat me to it was that my laptop's battery had totally lapsed and in it took 3 minutes of plug in to juice up enough to power up.

Take a look at the front of the missile. That's not a seeker, it's a wind turbine to generate power during flight. If flying into a head wind more than 8 knots, it can generate enough wind powered electricity to keep it flying indefinitely. If it's flying with a tail wind, the wind turbine output is reduced obviously, but the tail wind still extends the range by up to a factor of 10.

Upon detonation, the warhead simply increases the local entropy, which as everyone knows, is a natural process anyway. So it's totally green and ecologically sound.

"an advanced all-weather radar seeker"

I wonder how well that will go with those advanced GPS/Galileo Jammers from RU.

Against GPS jamming, an advanced radar seeker will go just find, since it uses radar*, not GPS.

Navigation is be means of GPS plus Inertial navigation - yes, you can stuff the GPS signal, but inertial navigation systems have been demonstrated to be highly reliable (in Ukraine and elsewhere) even in the face of GPS jamming.

Jamming a radar is, of course, possible, but it's quite difficult to put a jammer (with sufficient power and on the right frequencies) in the right place to affect the target radar (in this case, the missile), given all the numerous possible targets that you need to protect, and if you do, you'll likely find that the first missile sent your way had a home-on-jam capability, and promptly blows up your jamming system.

Plus the SPEAR program seems to be including dual- or multi-mode terminal guidance options.

In times where US advanced munitions are removed from the Ukrainian front because the Russians have successfully spoofed the GPS targeting function in them, presenting a long-range missile with data link capabilities is an invitation to hack that link and get control over that missile. That and the F-35 ... what could go wrong ?

The data link is designed and built by software experts at a certain well-known US aerospace company using the cheapest chips their purchasing dept could source on Aliexpress