SCALPEL

SCALPEL (Small Contained-Area Laser Precision Energetic Load) is a laser-guided bomb produced by Lockheed Martin. The weapon is being developed from the Enhanced Laser Guided Training Round (E-LGTR) which is the training version of the Paveway II series of bombs. The rationale behind the system is to provide a light, low-collateral damage weapon which can utilise the infrastructure and platform integration already in place for the E-LGTR system. On 14 March 2010, the US Navy announced its intention to purchase Scalpel.[1] The Navy completed some integration work in 2011 and the weapon was still self-funded as of 2016, but Scalpel could be ready for operations in "a year or two" depending if a launch customer commits extra funding and test range support.[2] The Scalpel Plus version has a dual-mode SAL/GPS guidance system.[3]

Specifications

Program status
  • May 2008 – Three inert weapons successfully carried and released by AV-8B Harriers.[4]

See also

References
  1. "Lockheed's Scalpel bomb finds first customer". Flight Global. 2010. Retrieved 19 May 2010.
  2. Lockheed advancing Dual Mode Plus and Scalpel bombs – Flightglobal.com, 29 March 2016
  3. Lockheed developing GPS and laser-guided Scalpel – Flightglobal.com, 27 September 2016
  4. "Lockheed Martin Successful in First SCALPEL Flight Test". Archived from the original on 29 May 2008.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.