Thursday, October 10, 2013

Rockeye & Skeet.

This is coolbert:

First there was Rockeye and now there is Skeet!

Rockeye a cluster bomb "dumb" in contrast to "skeet" which is "smart"!

From the Strategy Page article "Hockey Pucks From Hell" by James Dunnigan

"First used during the 2003 Iraq war, the CBU-105 Sensor Fuzed Weapon is a cluster type bomb that releases 10 29.6 kg (65 pound) BLU-108 submunitions that in turn ejects 4 smaller hockey puck shaped “skeet” robots that seek out and attack armored vehicles . . . The CBU-105 can be used to attack formations of tanks, giving most of the submunitions an opportunity to destroy a vehicle."

Sub-munitions SMART, possessing organic and sophisticated sensors "skeet" or "hockey puck" type weaponry having an anti-armor application. Each "hockey puck" destroying enemy armor by the use of an EXPLOSIVELY FORMED PROJECTILE [EFP]!

That sub-munition detonating above an enemy tank, that EFP firing in a DOWNWARD trajectory, mortal damage to an armored vehicle the result.


"Skeet" detonates ABOVE the target, the EFP projected downward, the EFP a molten blob of copper striking the top most part of the enemy armor vehicle at high velocity.

That concept and tactic for engaging and defeating enemy tanks of course "Skeet" proceeded by Rockeye.

"The CBU-100 Cluster Bomb (also called the Mk-20 Rockeye II) is an American cluster bomb which is employed primarily in an anti-tank mode. It weighs 490 pounds and carries 247 Mk 118 Mod 1 bomblets."

"The anti-tank cluster bomb is an air-launched, conventional free-fall weapon." AND not smart. NOT having organic high-sophisticated sensors. That earlier version of such weaponry the technology not available or felt to be necessary.

"Each bomblet weighs 1.32 pounds (600 g) and has a 0.4-pound (180 g) shaped-charge warhead of high explosives, which produces up to 250,000 psi (1.7 GPa) at the point of impact, allowing penetration of approximately 7.5 inches (190 mm) of armor. Rockeye is most efficiently used against area targets requiring penetration to kill"

Rockeye cluster munitions from that era of the Cold War the usage of which was envisioned as one way to counter those massed formations of Soviet tanks during a breakthrough offensive. The worst nightmare of the NATO alliance, "Big Red" moves west.

Soviet tank divisions, tank armies, groups of tank armies and groups [?] of groups of tank armies terribly arrayed and echeloned, exploiting a rupture of NATO defenses, those massed formations of tanks and inexorable force deemed as unstoppable.

Rockeye seen as one option non-nuclear that had a possibility of countering the Soviet breakthrough. A multitude of shaped charges as released from the cluster bomb striking downward at the top most area of a tank, where the armor is thinnest.

An enemy tank either destroyed by sympathetic secondary explosions OR damage to the engine of the tank such that the armored vehicle rendered immobile.

SUCH WAS THE DEADLINESS OF ROCKEYE DURING THE ENTIRE PERIOD OF THE COLD WAR THAT THIS WAS A WEAPON DEEMED AS NON-EXPORTABLE!

"Skeet", however, an exportable weapon, being sold in abundance to foreign nations.

"Skeet" as with Rockeye before it having the same value on the battlefield as a tactical nuclear weapon but not an atomic detonation as that term understood. But hardly less deadly!

coolbert.

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