Sunday, January 17, 2010

Taliban In It's Sights

We are testing a new guided 70mm rocket made by BAE (Lockheed Martin (full disclosure: I have a tiny amount of LM stock) has a competing DAGR):

After more than a decade of development effort, by several different companies, there now several guided versions of the 70mm air-to-ground rocket. Now the U.S. Navy is buying fifty AKWS II (Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System) 70mm missiles, to test on Marine Corps AV-8 (Harrier) vertical takeoff aircraft, and U.S. Air Force A-10 (Warthog) ground attack aircraft.

Taliban have limited our firepower use with their use of human shields. On the technology side of the issue, our weapons can't get much more precise to avoid civilian deaths while we kill the enemy, so the only solution is to use smaller warheads that won't kill much beyond a small kill radius.

It would seem like the 70mm guided rocket will allow us to shoot in some cases that we cannot today with existing precision weapons. It won't be a silver bullet solution to all cases of human shields, but it will help.