Some questions about Mavericks
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Actually if you read the first paragraph “AGM-65 boresight procedure may only be performed on the ground if the missiles do not have dome covers and squibs installed. If the dome covers are present, the procedure must be done while airborne.”
…then it shouldn’t have to mention GND JETT ENABLE at all, one would think. The other thing to note is what it has to say about having to step to each station/weapon and wait for the timeout…then boresight that missile. That doesn’t seem to be how BMS behaves, from what I’ve read in the forums.
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Has anyone in BMS succeded in boresighting Mavericks on the ground ?
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I have. The avionics really really hate it and sometimes you just can’t. I believe it’s because the TGP (in BMS) insists in pointing in a direction with an associated ground location which is problematic while being on the ground. I.e. TGP in AG can’t look above horizon. I bet if you could taxi up to the edge of a crater it would work.
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Why would you want to BSGT on ground?
It’s easier to find some city near your target with some buildings that looks “odd”. Then you place target steer point on it and you can use it for boresighting. It’s a lot faster and easier than BSGT on ground.
If you don’t have such steer point you can use FCR to find some city near target.
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Why would you want to BSGT on ground?
It’s easier to find some city near your target with some buildings that looks “odd”. Then you place target steer point on it and you can use it for boresighting. It’s a lot faster and easier than BSGT on ground.
If you don’t have such steer point you can use FCR to find some city near target.
The more “work” you can do on the ground means less “work” you have to do in the air. Simple really.
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The more “work” you can do on the ground means less “work” you have to do in the air. Simple really.
This. The close the object is, the less accurate of a boresight you’ll get, however you can get the TGP and seeker heads looking at more or less the right location making airborne bore sighting quicker.
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The more “work” you can do on the ground means less “work” you have to do in the air. Simple really.
You still need to have the work done, no matters its in air or on ground. Work is work, hog is pork, simple as that
And don’t forget that when you run MAVs on ground you need to prepare then which makes ramp start slower. Also it consumes EO time as the EO time is said to be cumulative per mission. In air you have to turn them on no matters if you BSGT them or not.
It’s a good habit to find some city about 30nm before targets and use buildings for BSGT. Doing BSGT on your way to target does not requires any extra time in air as you do this when hauling your (T)rump to the target zone.
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The only battery in the Maverick is a one time use chemical-thermal battery which is activated on launch. Mavericks are powered by the aircraft’s electrical system through an umbilical cable before launch. The time limits are generally because the Peltier cooler for the IIR sensor is moving thermal energy from the seeker area to the rear of the missile in a thermal buffer. The longer this goes on the larger the thermal difference and the harder the cooler has to work until it can’t keep the sensor properly cool and the picture whitens. With the missile powered off this heat dissipates into the environment and resets. I’m sure there are other considerations on longevity, but finite battery power is not one.
As I understand it every single F-16/AGM-65 operator on the planet does a ground check/bore and then turns the missile off for takeoff which among other motivations checks if the missile even works at all. If it takes 5 hours of preparation to save 1 second in combat then you do those 5 hours of preparation. There is no “why bother” in professional air forces. Ground align against a 3,000’ distance reference object when missile and TGP are 10’ apart laterally gives 3 mil precision in alignment. You can always check and improve on it in air given the opportunity but if not then you’ll be glad to have the ground alignment as backup.
EO power gives power to all inventoried missiles simultaneously. The three minutes time starts for all missiles simultaneously and they provide video automatically at the end of those three minutes with master arm in SIM/ARM, WPN format displayed, and that missile selected. If the pilot wishes to bypass the timeout for that particular missile sooner than 3 minutes (e.g. missile was briefly powered off a short time ago and so is still spinning-cooled) the pilot uses the uncage button.
I’m guessing GND JETT ENABLE switch does more than just allow ground jettison. My estimation is that GND JETT ENABLE simply forces the WOW switches to report the in-flight condition with all of the changes that implies. This would explain a lot of things like how it starts the DWAT timer and allows Maverick video, etc.
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This very well could be the result of “after the fact engineering” It may have nothing to do whatsoever with power, or existing WOW functionality. It’s not uncommon for a contractor to look at a requirement that might say “Operator must be able to deliberately enable or disable XYZ functionality” and the contractor says “hey, why don’t we just tie it to ABC switch instead of adding another one in…shouldn’t effect anything else and accomplishes the requirement–now charge the Government an extra 100k for our engineering genius breakthrough…” Not saying that’s the case here, I have no idea, but my point is not to get TOO wrapped up around the WOW functionality as it is commonly understood.
My thinking is that you have to do it to override the safety and be able to blow the dome cover…or even worse, to apply power to the station in order to power up the weapon at all…which in the case of forward firing is a strict no-no on deck!
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The only battery in the Maverick is a one time use chemical-thermal battery which is activated on launch. Mavericks are powered by the aircraft’s electrical system through an umbilical cable before launch. The time limits are generally because the Peltier cooler for the IIR sensor is moving thermal energy from the seeker area to the rear of the missile in a thermal buffer. The longer this goes on the larger the thermal difference and the harder the cooler has to work until it can’t keep the sensor properly cool and the picture whitens. With the missile powered off this heat dissipates into the environment and resets. I’m sure there are other considerations on longevity, but finite battery power is not one.
As I understand it every single F-16/AGM-65 operator on the planet does a ground check/bore and then turns the missile off for takeoff which among other motivations checks if the missile even works at all. If it takes 5 hours of preparation to save 1 second in combat then you do those 5 hours of preparation. There is no “why bother” in professional air forces. Ground align against a 3,000’ distance reference object when missile and TGP are 10’ apart laterally gives 3 mil precision in alignment. You can always check and improve on it in air given the opportunity but if not then you’ll be glad to have the ground alignment as backup.
EO power gives power to all inventoried missiles simultaneously. The three minutes time starts for all missiles simultaneously and they provide video automatically at the end of those three minutes with master arm in SIM/ARM, WPN format displayed, and that missile selected. If the pilot wishes to bypass the timeout for that particular missile sooner than 3 minutes (e.g. missile was briefly powered off a short time ago and so is still spinning-cooled) the pilot uses the uncage button.
I’m guessing GND JETT ENABLE switch does more than just allow ground jettison. My estimation is that GND JETT ENABLE simply forces the WOW switches to report the in-flight condition with all of the changes that implies. This would explain a lot of things like how it starts the DWAT timer and allows Maverick video, etc.
…this - and some of what was noted in the previous handbook citation - are a lot of the reason I believe “ripple fire” of Mavs is totally bogus. From the book citation I don’t believe all weapons on a station (unless a single rail is mounted) are powered at once - only the one selected and under the hammer. And then there’s this -
“NOTE: When the inventory on any weapon station is changed, all AGM-65 will power off. The pilot must put power on the missiles and wait for the 3-minute timeout.” The inventory changes every shot…but it says “any weapon station”…so that holds for any weapon fired?
Which leads to believe that at best…if you are REAL good and REALLY fast…you can only fire one every 3 minutes. One weapon, one boresight, one shot…lather, rinse, repeat.
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Mavericks are definitely powered on globally, spinning gyros and cooling seeker as necessary. The video is standby (black) until needed. Normally video is only available for the missile selected and ARM/SIM but video can continue in the background if the first missile is locked and a second missile is selected and using the WPN format. I don’t know if video is always available internally to the missile for tracking purposes (the airplane only seeing black) or if there is no video anywhere if missile video is in standby. Considering the A-10 lists different idle times for video showing and video standby I’m guessing it’s the latter.
Maybe some countries did not elect to pay for the feature of simultaneous ready Mavericks or some airplanes cannot support the same but the F-16/USAF can. I’ve never heard of mixed ready/not-ready Mavericks ever. If you could share the passage of the book that makes you think that that would be interesting.
You can bore non-IR Mavericks on the ground through the clear covers with some image distortion. The covers are only removed with Master ARM so you’d use SIM on the ground. If using IR Mavericks (or otherwise opaque covers) you’d need Master ARM to remove the covers before any video was usable for any purpose.
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I know of a platform that operates as I describe, and I also know a bit about the missile…and I can’t see how you could “ripple” a triple rack even if you did power them all up at the same time. Not with any expected accuracy, anyway. Unless they were LMAV…you don’t have to boresight LMAV.
…all of a sudden I can’t recall how we did things on Harrier…but if it was as I suspect then there’s two platforms I know of. But neither use triple trees - only the single rail.
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Oh LAU-88, yeah no ripple within the same launcher. Only 3/9 paired stations. I don’t know the AV-8B at all but if you’re telling me minimum time between two Maverick launches was several minutes color me surprised. I could see the Harrier able to individually power stations because it’s light loading made use of asymmetric configs but the inability to power two missiles at once, wow.
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Why would you want to BSGT on ground?
It’s easier to find some city near your target with some buildings that looks “odd”. Then you place target steer point on it and you can use it for boresighting. It’s a lot faster and easier than BSGT on ground.
If you don’t have such steer point you can use FCR to find some city near target.
Macieksoft, I agree in part, except for we Carrier-types. We don’t have handy cities on ingress because we’re over water until close to the enemy coast. So, I would prefer doing it on deck. I would easily have time while the INS completes alignment. The problem is, the TGP won’t time in soon enough.
It may be “cheating”, but is there something in Config. that could be changed? I know there’s one for Mav boresight time. -
There’s power application and then there’s weapon time in after selection/under trigger. The Harrier only uses TERs, so no LAU-88…one weapon per station on a rail like every other USN/USMC platform. And yes - one side then the other in the firing sequence. But even though all stations apply may apply power at once you still need to let the station time in after selection…which happens in about the time it takes to re-attack, so it’s not really a factor other than one pass/one shot.
The previous F-16 citation implies to me that only a single weapon on a LAU-88 is timed in on MAV selection - so at most if you are loaded symmetrically you get two at the ready, one on each side. But the citation still says “3-minutes on inventory change”…which implies 3 minutes between shots. Which again may not be a factor if your ROE is one pass/one shot.
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Macieksoft, I agree in part, except for we Carrier-types. We don’t have handy cities on ingress because we’re over water until close to the enemy coast. So, I would prefer doing it on deck. I would easily have time while the INS completes alignment. The problem is, the TGP won’t time in soon enough.
It may be “cheating”, but is there something in Config. that could be changed? I know there’s one for Mav boresight time.One suggestion I’ve heard is to power up on the ramp. After launch, fly out x miles, then turn back to the ship and use the boat as your boresight target. Turn the Mavs off and continue the mission from there.
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One suggestion I’ve heard is to power up on the ramp. After launch, fly out x miles, then turn back to the ship and use the boat as your boresight target. Turn the Mavs off and continue the mission from there.
A_B, I have tried orbiting the Boat until TGP times in,which impeded achieving correct TOT(even with TGP powering on deck). However, your post gave me the idea of flying out toward Waypoint 2 until everything powers in, then turning back to the Boat just long enough to boresight. Then, power down the Mav’s until Fencing. I’m going to try that tonight.