So fingers crossed either SAL-Brimstone 2s and GPS+SAL Spear-3s or MMW next major then. Gunna be needed to fight IRIS-T SLM
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Speaking of that
Not sure if it’s a hint at mmW (As it seems to be salvo launching ATGMs) or if they just did it to look cool on the teaser …
Maybe, not a clear angle, but later on it shows something that looks like what we’ve already got
I think it’s a homage to the Jungle strike into on the Mega drive/SNES all those years ago
It would be funny if they added mmW but made it exclusive for this premium for a couple of patches
“We are testing it blah blah”
More likely is they’ll make it heli exclusive.
Like we had MAWS for helis for about a year or more before it was added on the F-111A and the response for the Harrier gr7 was always “its a feature for rotor wing not fixed wing” (and then "it uses a different MAWS so will be added with PD MAWS then got a C&P of the F-111As 5 months later)
So wouldnt be out of place for them to just add MMW for helis and not jets
Still means getting FnF on the Teapache though
Or maybe even Teapache-E and get MMW Brimstones
Teapache with the GMTI Radar working and being able to just hide and launch missiles would be great
Yeah, would actually make the Teapache playable
Fully modelled cockpit locking targets using the screen and rippling off Hellfires
I’ve had time to look at the images now and I’m confident that you’re mistaken on this occasion. The rocket motor section of the missile has broken into two sections, with the brown thing being the front half of the motor and the white bit being the rear half of the rocket motor and the actuation section. That means that the image of the parts laid out together does indeed show the correct layout of the missile. The EFWS section (~60 cm long) is almost entirely missing, which makes sense as that section holds the warhead.
So how do I the brown section is the front half of the rocket motor?
As I’ve mentioned before the ASRAAM uses a Steel Strip Laminate (SSL) composite rocket motor. This motor consists of helically wound strips of high tensile strength steel bonded in a form of resin. Roxel (the people who make the motor) released this image showing the design of the ASRAAM motor. It can be seen that the the SSL motor case has a thin heat shield layer which forms the outer skin of the missile.
In these images of three different ASRAAM tail sections you can see the same three layers that make up the missile. The steel strips, the brown stuff (likely the resin, or maybe additional heat protection) and the outer heat shield skin layer.
So the brown section of the missile appears to have had all of the outer layer break away (either from the detonation of the warhead, impact with the ground, or some other mechanism). It is however unmistakably the front part of the rocket motor. You can see that it has a domed front on it:
As well as an igniter tube on the inside:
Which perfectly matches the internal design of the motor we see in this declassified MOD cutaway from the National Archives:
And also the diagram of the early prototype motor. Note: The prototype motor used a carbon fibre composite case instead of SSL, but you can still see the general shape of the front section was retained:
Spoiler
Also if you pixel measure the ASRAAM diagram from the declassified Tornado manual and then pixel measure the “reassembled” missile you get a length for the motor section this is within about 100 mm of each other. Considering the inaccuracy caused by the perspective and the damage to the motor that is probably about as close as you could reasonably expect to get while using a relatively crude technique like this.
The fact that the length matches so closely strongly suggests (if the design wasn’t convincing enough) that the brown section is a the front half of the motor case (with the outermost layer stripped away), rather than something that goes inside the rear section.
So I think it is fairly conclusive that the brown section of the missile is the front half of the rocket motor, which has lost it’s outer protective layer by some means, rather than a motor that goes inside a separate fuselage. Also in general making an SSL fuselage for the missile and then putting a separate SSL motor inside it just doesn’t make much sense as a design choice.
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Nice analysis
As for layers it seems to me that it’s 4 in this picture
I.e. another brown insulator + liner layer on the inside
That layer looks ridiculously close to an insulation layer made of cork (extremly lightweight with 0,24 g/cm³).
Even if flameable: Without oxygen it wouldn’t burn (it’s sealed between two layers).
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Now you got my attention, can you circle out the 4th layer? I can’t see it.
@sudo_su1 @DevilO6 I assume you are referring to this bit of brown stuff, which appears to be behind the steel strip layer?
Spoiler
I must admit that confused me for a while, however I’ve found another image of that motor from a different angle, which seems to suggest that it is just a bit of an optical illusion. All the brown stuff is on the outside of the steel, but a section of the brown stuff has broken away exposing the steel and making the top section of brown stuff look like a different layer:
Other photos from inside the motor also don’t appear to show an inner insulation layer. It looks like the steel strips are exposed on the inside of the motor, albeit covered in a layer of soot / oxidation.
Good point, that’s seems quite plausible.
You can see the order of layers here
The burned brown stuff is clearly on the same metal layer
Hopes up for the dev server
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That’s the coolest thing i’ve seen all week genuinely, ridiculously intuitive too i’d never have put 2 and 2 together but now I look at it…, I assumed it might have been some sort of chemical coated cardboard.
Fun Fact: Cork is also sometimes used as a component in ablative heat shields of spacecraft where it pyrolyzes from the heat and lack of oxygen forming a heat barrier of carbon (ash). It’s getting used up while reentry so has to be renewed before every flight.
Well… So far looking like back to the Gripen For CAS in GRB and we’ll have to leave the Typhoon on the shelf for a while in that regard