FrangibleCover
commented
1 year ago This is certainly an imaginative solution... I think having the flare itself act as a sensor is going to lead to some really weird results, and I also think the loitering munition aspect is likely to cause the flares to act as remarkably effective missile soaks. Assuming you can launch more than four from an aircraft, they're situationally better than TALDs.
nuk92
DB Selector
Both
Baseline
No response
Hypothetical
No
Name
SAB-100MN [7x Illumination Flare]
Length (m)
1.065
Width/Span (m)
0.345
Diameter (m)
0.28
Weight (kg)
106
Range (nm)
2
Target Altitude / Depth (ft)
No response
Target Speed (kts)
No response
Launch Altitude / Depth (ft)
up to 65617 ft
LaunchSpeed (kts)
up to 1080kts
Warhead
-
Targets
Surface Vessel, Submarine, Land Structure - Soft, Land Structure - Hardened, Runway, Mobile Target - Soft, Mobile Target - Hardened, Mobile Target - Personnel
CEP (m)
50
Sensors
1x Generic Illumination Flares (copy of the generic searchlight - 251)
Weapon Codes
Loiter Capability (Parachute), Bearing-Only Launch (BOL)
Comments
weapon coast max speed: 530 kts max descent speed of flares with parachute: 4.5 m/s
Most redfor aircraft don't have IR pods. The idea here is having a few aircraft drop illumination bombs ahead of attacking aircraft. One issue that came to my mind is having the weapon not lock to anything which would end it's loiter capability and go into free fall quickly losing altitude. The warhead could have 0DP if one is necessary.
Would this be feasible?
Sources