Early ALCM studies - ZAGM-86A and AGM-86B

Just a quick note on the AGM-86A from Goetz's "A technical history of america's nuclear weapons: volume II - developments from 1960 through 2020 - second edition":

Length: 167.25 inches, (13'11.25", 4.24 meters)
Wingspan: 115 inches at 35 degrees,
Weight: 2082 pounds,
Speed: Mach 0.65-0.85,
Range: 650nm

They were about the same size as SRAM, so the B-1 could carry up to 24 of them internally.

I was looking for range, and couldn't find it online when I remembered I had the book. No index, which made it more difficult, but a useful book nonetheless.

That's a size and weight that would have made them tactical aircraft friendly. I'd say they would be better than a B-61 for attacking tactical targets, as would the SRAM 2, the intended replacement for the B-61. The warhead was around 300lbs, so substituting a conventional munition wouldn't yield much bang, but range could be sacrificed for payload.
 
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apparition13 said:
That's a size and weight that would have made them tactical aircraft friendly. I'd say they would be better than a B-61 for attacking tactical targets, as would the SRAM 2, the intended replacement for the B-61. The warhead was around 300lbs, so substituting a conventional munition wouldn't yield much bang, but range could be sacrificed for payload.
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The original AGM-86A was a really interesting concept to be used by penetrating bombers, allowing them to attack multiple targets off their flight path and acting as an armed decoy. The later B version was really an alternative concept looking to avoid penetration entirely, less adaptable to alternative applications but a response to the political-military concerns of the time around penetrating bombers.
 
In-house ASD (Wright Patterson) ALCM study.

ASD ALCM.jpg

Early preliminary design studies of the ALCM included the Subsonic Cruise Attack Missile (SCAM), the Subsonic Cruise Armed Decoy (SCAD), and the Subsonic Cruise Unarmed Decoy (SCUD), the latter a replacement for the Quail decoy, all of which began as design studies by Wright Field's design engineers. ASD's Development Planning deputate worked with both the Air Force Avionics Laboratory and the Air Force Aero Propulsion Laboratory in developing the ALCM concept. Particularly vital was the projection of engine technologies for gas turbine power plants that were sufficiently small for use in a missile. After many years of further development studies in the Air Force and the Department of Defense, the AGM-86 ALCM achieved operational status in 1982.
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Splendid Vision, Unswerving Purpose: Developing Air Power for the United States Air Force During the First Century of Powered Flight
2002
 
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The W80 warhead should be loaded from the bottom, not the top.


W80loading.jpg
 
Now we are getting nearer the real ancestor of the ALCMs, and of all the modern (i.e. Seventies on) air breathing, air launched cruise missiles. The real ancestor was the CLAMP, Chemical Air Launched Missile Puny. After my very old post somewhere here, I am delighted to see CLAMP cited in the new Scott's work on US supersonic bomber projects talking about the GD Configuration 2120 AMPSS. CLAMP were intended as an alternative primary armament (four of them) housed in the rear bomb bay (one Mk-53 or four Mk-43 were the free-fall options). CLAMP were massive than the ALCM, remeber they were intended to be suersonic. The forward bay housed 9 SRAM-like missile. The available GA drawing of the GD aircraft shows a missile different from the real SRAM. I suggest, since the timeframe (June 1964) that this was a concept studied under the LASRM program.
This is the best I can conclude now. LASRM offspringed the concepts going to the ASALM.
 
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apparition13 said:
Just a quick note on the AGM-86A from Goetz's "A technical history of america's nuclear weapons: volume II - developments from 1960 through 2020 - second edition":

Length: 167.25 inches, (13'11.25", 4.24 meters)
Wingspan: 115 inches at 35 degrees,
Weight: 2082 pounds,
Speed: Mach 0.65-0.85,
Range: 650nm

They were about the same size as SRAM, so the B-1 could carry up to 24 of them internally.

I was looking for range, and couldn't find it online when I remembered I had the book. No index, which made it more difficult, but a useful book nonetheless.

That's a size and weight that would have made them tactical aircraft friendly. I'd say they would be better than a B-61 for attacking tactical targets, as would the SRAM 2, the intended replacement for the B-61. The warhead was around 300lbs, so substituting a conventional munition wouldn't yield much bang, but range could be sacrificed for payload.
Click to expand...
For a stubby CALCM, I'd definitely want as close to a 1000lb warhead as I could get. I suspect that the range would end up down under 300nmi. In either case, you'd need a much more accurate guidance system to be useful, probably DSMAC early on and then some flavor of imaging via datalink as component sizes came down.

And I'm still amazed and confused at how the ALCM fuselage is mostly big die-cast chunks, not light weight stressed skin. Probably made the ALCM a lot cheaper to make than building it like a Cessna...

I just took a look at the Wiki pages for the SLAM and SLAM-ER, and I think a stubby CALCM would have been a significantly better choice than the Harpoon-based SLAM/ER. Yes, the SLAM/ER are lighter, but even a 300nmi stubby CALCM would have far better range than SLAM-ER. And you're not really losing any weapons capacity, any pylon carrying a SLAM is only carrying one missile. At worst you'd be short some fuel due to MTOW limits, which you fix by hitting a tanker before the strike departs.
 
I can see pitot tubes in the illustrations on ALCM. Are they still there on the eventual production units?

Also, I think I never see any pitot tubes sticking out of production Tomahawks....
 

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