USAF s F-35A får nytt våpen - Stormbreaker - Warrior Maven

 

Pentagon Arms F-35 With "Breakthrough" Stormbreaker Attack Bomb

 

The Stormbreaker bomb is capable of tracking and destroying moving targets in all kinds of weather conditions from ranges as far as 40-nautical miles.

·         KRIS OSBORN, WARRIOR MAVEN - CENTER FOR MILITARY MODERNIZATION

·         JAN 4, 2024

By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

The US Air Force is arming its entire fleet of F-35s with the cutting edge Stormbreaker bomb capable of tracking and destroying moving targets in all kinds of weather conditions from ranges as far as 40-nautical miles.

In development for years, the now operational Stormbreaker arms the F-15E and F/A-18 and is currently testing on all three variants of F-35s. Beginning as the Small Diameter Bomb II, the Stormbreaker has been a pioneering and ground-breaking, air-launched weapon engineered with a “tri-mode” seeker enabling it to track targets with infrared, laser and millimeter wave technology. The weapon is also one of the early iterations of how two-way data links can be engineered into an air dropped weapon to better enable in-flight course correction and an ability to hit moving targets.

For these reasons, Stormbreaker is described by Raytheon engineers as a “network-enabled weapon that can engage moving targets in all weather conditions using its multi-effects warhead and tri-mode seeker.” This kind of progress with Stormbreaker is part of why the Air Force just awarded Raytheon with a deal to build as many as 1,500 of the bombs. The arrival of the weapon in greater numbers follows a year of 28 successful test drops in 2023 and the expansion of the Stormbreaker across the Pentagon’s fleet of attack aircraft.

The Stormbreaker is engineered with warhead and explosive versatility as well, as it can leverage shape-charge jets and better fragmentation technologies to both penetrate tanks and improve lethality. The weapon can also use various kinds of “fusing” technologies such as a delayed fuse enabling the bomb to penetrate a target before detonating to maximize explosive effect.

A weapon such as the Stormbreaker introduces a handful of new tactical advantages to include the ability to use all-weather millimeter wave sensing to track moving targets in an obscured weather environment such as rain, cloud, sand or fog. This is particularly relevant in scenarios where GPS might be jammed, compromised or rendered ineffective by enemy attacks. The weapon can also be placed in a relevant way along the broader US Air Force trajectory of weapons modernization and innovation.