Sep 122010
1994 NASA-Langley wind tunnel model photos of an F-117 packing two Joint Stand Off Weapons on external mounts. While these would almost certainly have provided a much bigger bang than the weapons shown yesterday, they would have been noticeably less stealthy… which would seem to defeat the purpose of using an F-117 in the first place.
6 Responses to “F-117 with External Stores: JSOW”
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Although it would have screwed up the stealth on the way in (maybe if you were careful to keep the aircraft nose on to any radar on the way in?) it would still be stealthy on leaving the target area, so that could be an advantage as it headed home.
Apparently, there were some weapons that were either designed specifically for use with the F-117, or modified for use on it, but what they were is still classified.
Those small cruise missiles shown on the one in the earlier article might have been some of these.
They could be for destroying radars be letting them fly right down the beam with the radar being unable to detect them because of their low RCS right up to a few seconds before impact.
Those look like glide-bombs or dispensers. They could be launched from high altitude and dispense chaff or other counter measures while the F-117 then drops down and behind the “jamming” for more penatration ability.
Randy
One of Bill Gunston’s 1980’s “weapons of the future” books shows a similar shape described as the Northrop ND-10, a self-guided submunitions dispenser, in line with Randy’s conjecture. It was shown attached to the nacelles of an F-15 (since the design of the F-117 was unknown at the time).
The little conformal cruise missiles on the F-117 are shown on page 120 of the 1985 book “High Technology Warfare”.
They are Northrop ND-10 stealth dispensers that carry guided submunitions and approach their target at low altitude in terrain-following mode.
The things shown on the underside of the F-15 are AWCIT (Advanced Weapon Carrier Integration Technology) payload buses.
They can climb to 50,000 feet and accelerate to Mach 3 (I assume using some sort of onboard rocket ) then I assume they dive toward their target before releasing their guided submunitions.
It looks like the JSOWs are carried just outboard of the landing gear on some sort of faceted pylons.
So I was confusing the two? Sorry about that Pat, thanks for the clarification.
As soon as you mentioned that illustration, I thought to myself “I know exactly the one he’s talking about”, and headed for bookcase #8 where all the non-specific to aircraft or naval weapons-related stuff is at.
In the illustration ND-10’s are shown coming off the bottom of a F-20 Tigershark
The AWCITs are strange looking little things; I was trying to figure out what they reminded me of, and realized it was the Metaluna flying saucer from the movie “This Island Earth”:
http://www.kennyscrap.com/thumbnails/metaluna.jpg
With some Avro Project Y thrown in for good measure:
http://www.laesieworks.com/ifo/lib/AVRO-pict/avro-omega12.jpg