GreenPlease wrote:
Actually the Harop has multiple ways of finding a target (it has has a large combined thermal and infrared observation assembly) and slow doesn't matter because it's designed as an LO aircraft. In fact its estimated RCS is in the same range as the F-35 (last I saw in Jane's) and it is designed to selectively broadcast its position in an effort to get SAM sites to target it. It can operate autonomously or be remote controlled by an operator (thus it can be targeted dynamically). It's really not that complex of a weapon system either IMO. There's no reason the U.S. couldn't assemble something similar if not better. 51lbs is plenty to disable/kill a mobile SAM site. Any hardened facility will be known of ahead of time (static site) and be targeted by a bigger fish (again, LRSB/B-2/some sort of cruise missile). The only problem for a weapon like the HAROP would be a SAM site protected by something along the lines of a Pantsir/Tunguska. Such a site would present a problem for weapons like the F-35 as well though.
I'm not saying that sort of capability wouldn't be useful, but you can't compare a drone with a 51 lb war cranium to a stealthy multi role fighter, period. And slow does matter, hugely. In the opening air campaign of OIF I hit maybe 3-4 ATO assigned targets; the rest were pick up games where a mini strike package was put together on the fly. You just cannot say that a small, slow drone with a tiny war head is even remotely the same as an aircraft that can also help protect the strike package from air-to-air, and can also carry weapons that can kill other nodes of the IADS. You don't need to kill just the TTRs, but SOCs and GCI and all the rest. A one trick pony like the Harop can't do any of those things. It's a neat capability and as a strike package commander I'd love to have that in my bag of tricks, but I'd never trade it for an F-35.
___________________________________________________
Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.