|
ATACMS in action
Hat tip: Kim du Toit. Edited for brevity.Last night, the Jihadi air defense pickets were trumped by an unidentified "satellite guided missile" with a 500 pound warhead which slammed into an Islamist training camp in Northern Iraq. The missile was probably an Army ATACMS artillery round, one version of which is GPS-guided. The system has a 300-kilometer range and is semi-ballistic. That gives it several very scary tactical properties, the first of which is that the projectile arrives faster than the speed of sound from the edge of space. You will never hear it coming. MANPADs cannot even begin to track it. The second is that it has a relatively short time of flight. Unlike air missions, which must often be planned hours or days in advance and may arrive after the enemy has scattered or gone to ground, a Special Forces reconnaissance unit can hammer a Jihadi encampment with a literal bolt from the blue upon transmitting the target grid coordinates. In many ways, the ATACMS functions like a very long range equivalent of the Israeli helicopter missile ambush tactic, which has been responsible for killing many Jihadi terrorists, often while riding in their cars. The Israelis have always struggled with concealing the approach of the attack helicopter from their targets and have typically camouflaged its onset by flying a number of other aircraft in the vicinity. The ATACMS, being faster than its own sound, arrives unannounced. One disadvantage of the missile is its great cost and inability to engage a moving target. In that respect, the Israeli helicopter missile ambush is superior. And while its time of flight is short, ATACMS is not instantaneous. That limits ATACMS to targets that have momentarily stopped, such an encampments or safe houses. If the US Army can develop a cheap 35 pound round (105 mm equivalent) with an equivalent range, Special Forces or Iraqi agents working for the coalition could plink jihadi security positions, pickets, sentries, or columns at rest with complete surprise. Do you pronounce the ATACMS acronym as "Attack âems"? Thatâd be so fitting... Posted by: Dar 2003-11-21 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=21573 |