ok, imagine having a few war heads hovering around your head in discusion as to if your a terrorist or not lol.
"Hovering" probably means flying in a circle from hundreds or a few thousand of feet in the air kind of like how a UAV can "hover".
I guess it's good. Anythings better than the cheap land mines cluster bombs they drop that have a failure rate of up to 20%. It'll be interesting to see if the Israeli's can actually lower civilian casualties or whether this is just a moneymaking/good PR move.
As far back as Desert Storm there were weapons out there that could be used in the manner described, being steered manually for the final phase of their flight so as to allow for visual ID of the target, and being manually steered could always allow for some limited loiter time over the target area. You could do that with the AGM-62 Walleye (now retired from USN service as its getting on a bit), AGM-130, AGM-142 Popeye/Have Nap....neither of which are the absolute cutting edge in weaponry, given the amount of time they've been around. This weapon is probably a bit better at it, with better optical sensors so as to provide better imagery of the target area, and with a turbojet engine will have a somewhat longer loiter time than the others, but its still really more of an evolution than a revolution in capability to my eyes.
urgh, more amunition to fuel the fires of hatred and destruction.. I garauntee that even with the technology, innocent people will die as a cause of it. Next we'll have hand grenades that roll themselves, and IED's that jump at the target if it isnt close enough. What a ****ing waste of intelligence.
I'm just sitting here thinking about how many people would have been spared from friendly fire fatalities. I think that this angle of technology has the potential to save some lives.
I agree with Stuey - it's a step in the right direction, it's not a leap or revolution, but it's certainly a start to move in a more advanced direction than a typical missile, which is nothing more than a glorified artillery shell, realistically.
Hmmm... on balance, I disagree. I can vividly remember the on-board video of a US fighter jet (with commentary by the pilot) bombing the crap out of a group of people trying to make it across a road in a town in Iraq somewhere. "Aw, dude..." the pilot chuckles as the group goes up in smoke (literally). Later it was argued that these were not innocent civilians, honest, but armed insurgents. However, there was no way to tell from the target acquisition video footage, which was basically all that the pilot could see on his monitor in the cockpit at the time. The people just looked like people. They were in a residential area. They were running for cover closely huddled together. But he pressed the button regardless. In the end, it comes down to human decision. And humans are crap at sensible, rational, dispassionate decision making. No matter how high-res the cameras, and how advanced the missiles, people will see what they want to see. And then they will press the button regardless.
More detail about this missile here . Interestingly the article states that Flight International as long ago as 1995 reported that China would give funding to Israel to assist in developement of this missile (China being interested as a customer). Also the article states that Israel had requested a "stealth" coating from the US, called "signalflux" for radar evasion. Which suggests that China may be aquiring (or have aquired) US military hi-tech in an interesting way.
If that's the case, then, if the US ever goes to war with China or any of it's allies, it will be comforting for them to know that China will have the same life saving technology.
So what if they decide it isn't a target? You've just lofted several million dollars worth of hardware and maybe a hundred pounds of high explosives out there and now decided not to use it. Then what? It's not coming back to the plane, and sooner or later it's going to come to the ground. Sure, they could detonate it in mid-air, but even then...
radio controlled missiles? blowing people up from afar on screen? maybe they should just have a war via BF2 and to determine who's the victor... makes more sense to me
But then what do you do when the noobs are bunny hopping and ffing just to steal a plane which then falls straight into the water? =P
That was exactly my question. From a psychological standpoint I think this technology could make things worse: It will be fired with less hesitation ("just in case") due to the idea that it has a failsafe - but I doubt that failsafe will be used ("Well, it still looks like they could be enemies - it sure would be a shame to waste this chance or this expensive hardware now that it's out there.")
