TABLE OF CONTENTS The primary purpose of this chapter is to provide a general overview of weapon delivery systems and estimates of combat delivery accuracy for computing effectiveness of air-to-ground (or surface) weapons delivered from fixed-wing aircraft. Weapon delivery includes bombing, air-to-air and air-to-ground (or surface) gunnery, and missile launching. More specifically, weapon delivery is divided into three phases and includes the following: (a) target acquisition, (b) maneuvering to weapon release, and (c) postrelease egress maneuver. The weapon delivery function can improve both survivability and delivery accuracy. Although conventional, wings-level dive bomb delivery can achieve acceptable accuracy (especially when assisted by a dive-toss or other automatic bomb release system), an aircraft is vulnerable during this phase. Survivability can be enhanced without sacrificing accuracy by flying a maneuvering delivery profile in which the bomb is released from a continuous turn. The delivery maneuvers can be flown manually, using steering cues generated by the system, or automatically, with the system controlling the aircraft.
The performance and flexibility of the maneuvering weapon delivery system makes it ideal for use with advanced weapons. For example, the tactical flight management ( TFM) system will set up toss deliveries for standoff weapons and provide controlled postrelease maneuvering to allow target designation for laserguided bombs. It also allows delivery of multiple bombs in a string along a specific ground track not aligned with the release heading. This feature is needed for tossing multiple dispenser munitions against linear targets, such as vehicle columns or runways.
In order to...
