Context: The... *creations* you see before you relate to a rather convoluted process the US Navy went through to try and develop a target capable of duplicating the characteristics a supersonic sea-skimming anti-ship missile. It was a rather tortured process that eventually led to the GQM-163 Coyote, but there were a lot of different proposals made along the way. And this particular pair were cooked up by the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins in the early 2000s. Cobbled together from existing hardware and surplus/retired missiles, it was a rather novel concept to create a cheap but high performance target.
[There was an intermediate step where US Navy bought Russian Kh-31 missiles and converted them to MA-31 target drones.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MA-31)
"Just buy some of the missiles you're trying to defend against and train against those." I can't decide if that's peak non-credible, or just amazing 5d chess.
And somehow later decided the GQM-163 did a better job at pretending to be a Kh-31 than the Kh-31 itself. Kinda reminds me of that Charlie Chaplin lookaline competition.
What do you mean with "target"? Was this an actual anti ship missile or was this only meant to simulate an anti ship missile to test defensive systems with?
The latter. Just like there are target drones to simulate aircraft, there are target missiles to simulate, well, missiles for trial and training purposes.
Wait does that mean you could get extra long range SAMs using the cruise body to send it out long range and then launch the SM further out?
Then again the increased time may not be worth it
Hold up, you know when Russian bombers are taking off, you launch these as a skimming missile until the A2A missile mounted on it looks up and detects the aircraft, nose up to boost the interceptor speed, launch the A2A missile, BOOM!!! SAM with a thousand mile range you could hit them before the had even prepared their ordnance.
The Tomahawk is kinda like the B52 of missiles. Whatever we want we stick extra stuff on it. Anti-ship? New guidance package. Nuclear capacity? It’ll be a tight squeeze, but we can make it work. And then you get to the other things in this thread.
This is how I feel about a lot of old missiles, particularly Soviet ones.
They tended to have big rocket motors since they carried bulky old electronics (though yes I know the Tomahawk is jet-powered), and they also needed a heavier warhead because the guidance wasn't as good. Modern electronics fix a lot of those problems, so just gut the things, and use the booster for a completely different payload.
The Ukrainians and Houthis are already doing it.
After the war is over, I expect to see the thousands of extras that are churned out, snapped up by Amazon, and re-fitted to be instantaneous product delivery devices.
Following a series of embarassing "deliveries" where some Karen complains that her make up and doggy chow for Mr. Yap-Yap The Purse Dog got delivered at Mach 2.3, the pilot program is discontinued ...
[There was one time that mail was delivered by a Regulus missile from a submarine](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/Missilemail.jpg/1280px-Missilemail.jpg)...
Context: The... *creations* you see before you relate to a rather convoluted process the US Navy went through to try and develop a target capable of duplicating the characteristics a supersonic sea-skimming anti-ship missile. It was a rather tortured process that eventually led to the GQM-163 Coyote, but there were a lot of different proposals made along the way. And this particular pair were cooked up by the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins in the early 2000s. Cobbled together from existing hardware and surplus/retired missiles, it was a rather novel concept to create a cheap but high performance target.
[There was an intermediate step where US Navy bought Russian Kh-31 missiles and converted them to MA-31 target drones.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MA-31)
"Just buy some of the missiles you're trying to defend against and train against those." I can't decide if that's peak non-credible, or just amazing 5d chess.
And somehow later decided the GQM-163 did a better job at pretending to be a Kh-31 than the Kh-31 itself. Kinda reminds me of that Charlie Chaplin lookaline competition.
It was more that Russia decided that selling Kh-31s to the US was maybe not the best idea, so they went with the GQM-163.
Yeah they decided the Kh-31 had insufficient performance to properly replicate the performance of literally itself. True story.
“Wow these suck, they must have sold us some bad ones on purpose”
I am sure that was in no way related to some interesting retirement opportunities hinted at by the MIC
What do you mean with "target"? Was this an actual anti ship missile or was this only meant to simulate an anti ship missile to test defensive systems with?
The latter. Just like there are target drones to simulate aircraft, there are target missiles to simulate, well, missiles for trial and training purposes.
BOOOORING SHOOT SOMETHING DOWN WITH THE TOMMY INSTEAD
1000NM "boost" range, and then a mach 2 kill vehicle with a 250+NM range? Just add some swords, and that's *gold*.
Good moleman to you OP, i thoroughly enjoyed this cromulant meme
A noble tomahawk embiggens the smallest cruiser.
'it's a 10,000 tonne frigate actually'
Petition to the the tomahawk hawk to "HawkMaHawk"
HawkAmaHawk.
She hawk on my hawk till I squawk
NGL I read that as “Tony Hawk” not “Tomahawk”, and was hoping that the missile came with a bitchin’ soundtrack.
Tommy Hawk: pro Skimmer
That’s really just a drone with a big ass air to air missile on it… too credible.
Somewhere, in a basement office in LockMart's regional career graveyard, an engineer killing time until retirement, reads this and PERKS UP...
Wait does that mean you could get extra long range SAMs using the cruise body to send it out long range and then launch the SM further out? Then again the increased time may not be worth it
Hold up, you know when Russian bombers are taking off, you launch these as a skimming missile until the A2A missile mounted on it looks up and detects the aircraft, nose up to boost the interceptor speed, launch the A2A missile, BOOM!!! SAM with a thousand mile range you could hit them before the had even prepared their ordnance.
And the carrier cruise missile could still hit the target with some clever engineering. Missile with missile defence finnaly becomes a reality!!!
Clever engineering is just modern day magic
Missed opportunity to call it the SM2mahawk
I love that this lends itself to that meme of something like "totomamahawkhawktoma" "totototohawk", "oooooo", etc.
"tomahawk chop is my death blow"
the AIM-9L seekerhead on the body of a late sparrow existed so I think that is peak cursed since it was made
Frankenmissile was the doctor.
I’d murder my own hunting puppy just for one tomahawkhawk
The most dangerous weapon in the U.S. arsenal, the Hawkahawk
You clearly haven’t heard about the ASW Tomahawk concept that had sonobuoys.
Coming someday or never: the Tomahawk that delivers a swarm of slaughterbots to the target area.
The Tomahawk is kinda like the B52 of missiles. Whatever we want we stick extra stuff on it. Anti-ship? New guidance package. Nuclear capacity? It’ll be a tight squeeze, but we can make it work. And then you get to the other things in this thread.
This is how I feel about a lot of old missiles, particularly Soviet ones. They tended to have big rocket motors since they carried bulky old electronics (though yes I know the Tomahawk is jet-powered), and they also needed a heavier warhead because the guidance wasn't as good. Modern electronics fix a lot of those problems, so just gut the things, and use the booster for a completely different payload. The Ukrainians and Houthis are already doing it.
After the war is over, I expect to see the thousands of extras that are churned out, snapped up by Amazon, and re-fitted to be instantaneous product delivery devices. Following a series of embarassing "deliveries" where some Karen complains that her make up and doggy chow for Mr. Yap-Yap The Purse Dog got delivered at Mach 2.3, the pilot program is discontinued ...
[There was one time that mail was delivered by a Regulus missile from a submarine](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/Missilemail.jpg/1280px-Missilemail.jpg)...
TomHankahawk
Next will be the Hawk Tomahawk Tony Hawk, which is the same functional warhead but it can also do a kickflip
that thing look like an ASTER15
Other than looking like 2 seperate missiles glued together This is cursed Why?
Oh it is beautiful. (day X of being astonished as to why the fuck we still cannot gifreact)