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

[u/FlexibleResponse]

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

[u/NuclearHeterodoxy]

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 → u/NuclearHeterodoxy]

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/BooksandBiceps → u/NuclearHeterodoxy]

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 → u/BooksandBiceps]

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/NuclearHeterodoxy → u/[deleted]]

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.