Boeing Integrated Defense Systems will be embarking on an 'awareness-building' programme for its Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) at Asian Aerospace, says Dan Jaspering, the programme's manager.
The next milestone in the weapon programme, for which Boeing was awarded a system development and demonstration contract last year, will be a series of development tests in the next few months.
A decision on low-rate initial production is anticipated in early to mid-2005, with the weapon due to be deployed by the US Air Force in 2006. Ultimately, the programme is expected to generate around $2.5 billion of sales to the US Air Force.
The SDB is designed to do more with less, says Jaspering. Four of the '250lb-class' (112kg) - actually 280lb - weapons will be capable of being carried on a single weapons station, allowing more targets to be attacked on each sortie.
They will be guided by a combination of jam-resistant GPS and INS and fielded with MBDA's Diamondback wing system, which will allow them to glide to their targets.
Smart racks
The US requirement is for the weapon to glide some 40nm (75km) from a launch height of 40,000ft (around 13,000m). In fact, says Jaspering, "we're well beyond that".
An Increment 2 version will have a datalink and a terminal seeker that will allow the SDB to attack moving targets. "We're not under contract for that yet; we expect funded development to start in 2006. We're working on requirements right now, trying to determine what that moving target version should be able to do. There's a lot of interest in that," adds Jaspering.
A projected Phase 3 SDB with the ability to loiter or autonomously seek targets is "very softly defined. I think it's pretty far out right now," he adds. The initial platform for SDB will be the F-15E, which will carry up to 20 of the weapons on 'smart racks'. These will have inbuilt computers to help handle stores management tasks.
ALAN DRON
Source: Flight Daily News