Fred J. McCall wrote:
"The WCMD-ER system adds a wing kit to the GPS version of the WCMD
tail kit to obtain a range of 30-40 miles."
-- http://www.f-16.net/f-16_news_article665.html

"The JSOW is a family of affordable, highly lethal weapons
revolutionizing strike warfare. This new generation glide weapon
ensures warfighter survivability by enabling precision air strike
launches from well beyond most enemy air defenses, at kinematic
standoff ranges up to 70 nm (130 km)."
http://www.raytheon.com/products/ste...s01_055754.pdf

Last I checked 70 is bigger than 40.

The 70 nm range smells to me like a publicity shot like the 110 nm
Phoenix shot and is probably not very operationally representative. For
an operationally representative shot the numbers are much closer. For
obvious reasons I won't discuss ranges.

I thought it got zeroed everywhere (although USAF was trying to get
some money put back for it). Did they get it refunded? Last I heard
they'd given up asking for procurement funds for '06 and were trying
to eke out $20-ish million to finish development.

Until it IOCs it's still a paper weapon.

As I said they're being dropped now at Eglin. We were surprised to hear
they were still being developed, but it isn't unusual to see funding cut
and then restored.

It's only more cost effective if you actually get to procure them.
Any time you start slapping things on bombs, that *is* effectively a
brand new weapon. Radical changes in aerodynamic behaviour. That's
why there are development programs for this stuff.

WCMD-ER is a weapon that costs tens of thousands of dollars verses JSOW
which costs hundreds of thousands. Any time you cut metal for an
entirely new shape it will cost more money. As to the flight testing
stuff, I agree, any time you change something that you will be dropping
you do need to extensively test it. That cost though is less though for
a modification of an existing weapon than for a completely new one.


Michael Kelly
BUFF Flight Tester