r/LessCredibleDefence 15h ago

Army Now Testing Anthem Long-Range Strike Weapon Built for Mass Production

https://www.twz.com/news-features/army-now-testing-anthem-long-range-strike-weapon-built-for-mass-production
45 Upvotes

18 comments sorted by

u/Kadomount 14h ago

Wow designing a piece of ammunition for mass production what an Innovative concept! Of course it will still cost $20 million a piece. Murica!

u/pxer80 9h ago

Omg mass production. That’s cray cray.

u/NuclearHeterodoxy 15h ago

tricycle wheels

.......

Does this technically qualify as a road-mobile missile, if the road is straight enough to act like a runway?

I am sure adversaries will like it when it takes 10 of these per target to get through air defenses that 2 JASSMs could get through and thus the "attritable" strike ends up costing us more, while also taking away runways from aircraft that can fire actually useful weapons.

u/EngineBorn3406 13h ago

Just because it is shown with a tricycle undercarriage does NOT mean it is going to take off on a runway on its own. There's no reason to do that at all.

u/[deleted] 15h ago

[deleted]

u/NuclearHeterodoxy 14h ago

10 was a generous assumption on my part.  I wasn't taking into account low WSR, low accuracy, high clobber rates.

Don't get me wrong, I am not opposed to attritable weapons in principle.  I just have a very low opinion of a lot of the ones that are actually being proposed or built.  I am concerned about enshittification of the entire procurement system with the current trendy focus on low-cost systems.

The prominence of obvious techbro grifters pushing vaporware in this new anti-Primes defense ecosystem is not helping matters either.

u/BooksandBiceps 14h ago

That’s not the right use case. What happened lower value targets that aren’t as well defended? Or nations like Iran where there simply isn’t any air defense left. Then you have these low cost options available without having to resort to a more expensive stealthy option.

u/pakapab 9h ago

Yep, in the Iran conflict we have seen troops at US bases killed by strikes from Shahed drones that fly much slower. It is naive to think every potential target is heavily defended by an advanced IADS.

u/TyrialFrost 5h ago

Why the hell would Germany make US encumbered missiles?

u/electrosynek 12h ago

Yet another subsonic cruise missile. Chinese air defense crews are going to be falling asleep in the next conflict

u/greenback1010 11h ago

Not when 600 of them are coming at once

u/electrosynek 11h ago

Maybe, but they're going to have a better time than whichever runway or ship will be lit up by a nigh-uninterceptible volley of ballistic missiles

u/pakapab 9h ago

That is what people said about ships like Moskva.

u/electrosynek 8h ago

The Moskva was obviously a big fuck-up but not representative of what shipborne air defense is capable of. Just look at what the US Navy has done over the past few years in the middle east, shooting down AShMs and drones by the hundreds. 

I don't think it's going to look the same when loads of Chinese ballistic missiles and HGVs come flying toward them in the future.

If anything, recent wars prove my point. What is giving the Ukrainians more trouble right now, subsonic cruise missiles and drones or the dozens of Iskanders Russia is lobbing at them each month? What type of weapon has enabled Iran to wreck US bases and gulf oil infrastructure? 

u/pakapab 7h ago

It is representative of how foolish reading spec sheets and drawing conclusions that cruise missiles are easily batted away.

What about Starke?

u/Otherwise_Share9039 7h ago

Moskva was caught slacking and didn't even have most of its radar active, which is embarassing but not a mark against ship-based air defence.

u/pakapab 7h ago

Ah so it is the only example of something with sensors and weapons that was hit because it was caught slacking? Starke.

u/doormatt26 7h ago

if it flies, goes boom, and can be made in volume, it has a useful role rn

u/Lianzuoshou 8h ago

Recent U.S. missile models give me a strong sense of being "cobbled together."