14 September 2016

Eyes In The Sky

In an age when long range guided missiles are the norm, the ability of a warship to strike moving targets like enemy ships, aircraft and ballistic missiles, is the range of its sensors.  For line of sight sensors, the curvature of the Earth limits that range to about 30 miles.

But, the U.S. military's latest manned fighter aircraft, the F-35, is designed so that it can transmit the input coming into its avionics to U.S. warships in the vicinity, greatly extending the range at which U.S. ships can strike moving targets (and thereby keeping U.S. warships further away from, and ideally out of range of, fire from their opponents).

This could extend the effective range of long range guided missiles on warships targeting moving targets by an order of magnitude from about 30 miles to several hundred miles.

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