The US Navy’s DMLGB Program

DMLGB on AV-8B(click to view full) “Dual guidance” bombs are becoming popular. They cost more, but deliver on versatility once all that money has been spent to get its carrying aircraft into position. GPS/INS guidance gives them the ability to bomb through sandstorm, fog, or other obscurement; or from high altitude, or without active targeting. Laser guidance adds other advantages, including improved accuracy and the ability to moving targets that have been “painted” by a laser designator. Britain’s Paveway-IV project, France’s recent retrofits, Boeing’s LJDAM, and Raytheon’s Enhanced Paveway family weapons all fall into this category. So, too, does RAFAEL’s Spice, though it uses a combination of GPS/INS and imaging infrared (IIR). In October 2008, US Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) added another entry when PMA-201 Precision Strike Weapons delivered the first Dual-Mode Laser-Guided Bomb (DMLGB) to the Fleet… The weapons will equip USMC AV-8B Harriers, and USMC and US Navy F/A-18A-D Hornets. Integration is also planned for the US Navy’s F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets, and could be undertaken with any aircraft that had appropriate carriage capacity and a MIL-STD 1760 databus. DMLGB was a US Navy and Marine Corps program, which began in 2005 as a result of an […]