This story is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. I don't know much about the specs of this pod, but it sounds very unusual. The article at the link is a bit vague, but a little research turns up hints that the pod is intended for use in radar-denied areas and is to provide long-range IR tracking. It is also to contain a secure datalink capability. Okay... putting 3 and 6 together, and given that the F-15C already has a datalink capability, it could well be that the datalink is intended to bridge the 4th-to-5th gen secure comms requirement so that the eagle can work better with F-22 and F-35 partners. But if it were me, that would not be the only possibility. Unless you do a lot of extra work, you can normally only get azimuth and elevation out of an IRST system. You can only make some crude guesses regarding the range of your target. But wait... I probably have a wingman. If he also has a similar pod, and the two pods are talking to each other via secure datalink... then suddenly I have an accurate range as well. Hmmm...
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/lockheed-martins-legion-pod-completes-125800081.html
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to join the discussion! Do you know something more about a recent flight test? Jot a line and let us know how it went! Think you know what will be coming next? Tell us what to expect! (Comments are moderated, so they may not appear immediately.)