Dang they’re only 30 years behind us now.
Operational testing is expected in 2024, with low-rate initial production, full-rate production, and initial capability testing expected in 2025, according to the Government Accountability Office’s 2023 Weapons Systems Annual Assessment.
A total of 110 PrSMs are expected to be procured in fiscal 2024 and 190 in fiscal 2025
It's fairly ridiculous to claim that ATACMS M57(?) last produced a few years to decade ago which are still our best-in-class available for operational use until ~2025+ are "30 years" old tech. The number of PrSMs we'll have by end of next year would last us about 24 hours in a great power war.
https://www.thedefensepost.com/2024/03/07/lockheed-precision...
The quality of Russian equipment being deployed right now is really bad. The limiting factor here is not “science”.
Fun bonus if you want to watch some people die:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1dv3086/north_kore...
Ukraine is being hit with Iskander-M all the time, e.g. just days ago at Myrhorod taking out SU-27s.
The quality of Russian equipment being deployed right now is really bad.
And yet Ukraine is still losing territory, countless men, and the war. This blasé attitude is just bizarre, as if NATO has a secret stock of wunderwaffen about to be arrive and deliver the coup de grâce any day. NATO has spent a quarter trillion dollars+ on this proxy war, staked its credibility on it, and is losing.
Fun bonus if you want to watch some people die:
Things people who have lost their humanity say.
Ukraine is losing territory at a glacial pace. Meanwhile Russia is giving away (selling) territory to China.
Russia is also losing men att a rate of 5-to-1 or thereabout.
Losing the war? Pfft. Russia is throwing away all their equipment, countless of lives and ruining their economy in the ground... For nothing.
US-made weapons augmented by Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites for position updates in Ukraine are now susceptible to Russian electronic warfare (EW) jamming ... The weapons affected may include the 155mm Excalibur artillery projectiles, Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB), Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) and weapons rounds used with the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), among others, depending on how they are employed by the weapons operators.
An unnamed source reportedly familiar with the classified report told the NYT that in the worst-case scenario, only one in 19 Excalibur rounds was hitting its target, where the report said the cost per successful strike skyrocketed from $300,000 to $1.9 million between January and August 2023.
Being able to test GPS jamming techniques against intact munitions isn't some hypothetical academic problem.
The US military-industrial complex is probably extremely grateful for the chance to do the same, here. Very useful if there's ever a direct conflict.
Excalibur, GLSDB, JDAM, and ATACMS all have GPS-aided inertial guidance and can be set to fall back to just inertial; the US has long been aware of the likelihood of GPS jamming in a hot war, and certainly plans to employ the same sort of jamming themselves against potential enemies.
I fully expect there's a lot of work being done on cheap anti-jammer drones that home in on a jammer's signal; it's like a big "come get me!" signal. We already have HARM missiles for radar for a similar purpose.
There are definitely many ways to make those jammers disappear. Ukraine will inevitably find a way to do it on the cheap.
Or when Russians appears to have lost a jamming pod above Ukraine [1] Again bleeding edge EW tech which Russia just lost.
[0] https://mil.in.ua/en/news/russians-use-bombs-equipped-with-e...
[1] https://www.twz.com/ukraine-just-captured-one-of-russias-mos...
If Ukraine is just leaving the GPS guidance turned off entirely and relying on inertial guidance, then whatever secrets Russia has discovered in ATACMS really are academic.
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/dam/lockheed-martin/m...
I find it amusing Lockheed Martin cares about small business arms component suppliers
Lockheed et al are primarily systems integrators. They have sprawling networks of vendors that they’re orchestrating to produce “their” weapon systems.
That movie War Dogs, while comical and inaccurate about a number of points, kinda was spot on about that one.
e.g. https://www.acquisition.gov/far/part-19#FAR_Subpart_19_2
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/precision-stri...
I watch combat videos daily and Iskander is easily their most potent weapon after Lancet drones (and artillery). Patriot can't cover the whole massive frontlines.
The most potent weapon in their arsenal right now in terms of battlefield value are their helicopters and glide bombs
Ukraine is hitting Russian air defenses with ATACMS, successfully and repeatedly. Corresponding attempts with Iskanders and Kinzhals to target the Patriots have largely failed.
There seems to be a wide gap in capability between the two scenarios - in either the attacking missiles, the defending systems, or both. Ukraine doesn't have enough Patriots to defend everywhere, but they're dramatically more effective than the Russian equivalents where they are stationed.
If nothing else, the war has been a huge advertising boon for Western defense contractors.
> There seems to be a wide gap in capability between the two scenario
This is entirely premised on Russian air defense being equal in high value areas vs Ballistic missiles (which is easily the hardest test, even for the US). Patriot systems were tested many times IRL against SCUD missiles during Desert storm and more recently vs Iran, plus general skill available in US R&D/military, while Russia never tested their S-400 systems in (real) combat and is notorious for poor maintenance/training.
Unless you equalize these 2 things it's a moot point. RU missile teams have had plenty of press about improving their operational effectiveness in the last year. AA has not.
Additionally, these systems aren't that sophisticated, it's GPS+inertial navigation+maneuvering+maybe some limited anti-EW. The rest is intelligence, EW, operators, etc. ATACMS was designed in the mid 1980s after all...
Yes, we fairly reasonably believe that Russia's struggle to make progress against a smaller neighbor using NATO hand-me-downs is heavily indicative of how they'd do against all of NATO using B-2s, F-22s and F-35s.
I concede that NATO would put in more effort against Russia, but how about better not finding out in the first place? Russia would also put in more effort.
This is hubris at its finest.
I mean, that's the point. That Russia's obvious takeaway from Ukraine should be "we'd lose fast and badly against actual NATO".
As with Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, a loss in Ukraine is most likely to come from the West going "eh whatever good enough we're out", not superior tech on the Russian side.