Navy to Deploy New Fighter-Launched Weapon

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The U.S. Navy will soon deploy a new air-launched, precision-guided weapon that features a two-way data-link to identify and destroy moving targets at sea, giving fighters such as the F/A-18 Super Hornet a vastly improved attack envelope against a wider range of threats.

Called the AMG-154 Joint Standoff Weapon, or JSOW, the Raytheon Co.-built attack bomb uses GPS , inertial measurement unit guidance and an imaging infrared seeker in the final phase of flight to find and attack enemy targets.

While historically used as a land-attack weapon launched from air-platforms such as fighter jets, new technology allows the JSOW weapon to use the LINK 16 data-link to identify and kill moving maritime targets at sea from ranges as far away as 70 miles, Navy officials told Scout Warrior.

“The JSOW C-1 Moving Maritime Target capability allows the weapon to fly to an updated cue from its controlling platform, then transition to an image recognition/matching process enabled by an on-board database of ship characteristics stored in the weapon database selected in mission planning or in the cockpit,” Navy spokeswoman Lt. Amber Lynn said.

Read the rest of the story at Scout Warrior.

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