Re: MLRS going to all guided rockets

Jim Lillie <jimlillie@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dirk Bruere at Neopax wrote:

I wonder if the Army would consider an MLRS round filled with Rods,
Flechettes,
or some other similar payload. It might not be as effective as
bomblets, but you
wouldn't have to worry about duds either.

An aircraft coming in low just below the speed of sound and dropping a
ton of ball bearings would be pretty devastating on soft targets below.

Back in WW the First I think it was the French aviators were issued
boxes of flechettes. These were bullet sized with a pointed nose and
rudimentary fins stamped in the rear. Dropped from 1000 meters terminal
velocity was lethal and they went into a foxhole or trench nicely.

Problem was density of coverage. If you caught a column of marching
troops ok. But once they dispersed you needed a tonnage those planes
could not handle.

Now if we had a really cheap thermal sensor for body temperature ....

Of course, that'd be the 'easy' way.
I wonder about a spinning bus, dispensing dumb projectiles, with a
sensor in the bus.

Or about a laser + DLP (the switchable mirror array used in some
projectors) as a multi-target designator, with a few thousand dropped
quarrels.
The quarrels are smart enough only to fall dumbly for a determined
period, then turn on the laser-seeker and home on a spot.

.