Quote:
Originally Posted by Homer
Given that T2K postulates a continued Cold War I wonder if HAWK with its early 90s TMD and lethality mods would be retained to complement Patriot in Army formations and never be removed from the USMC inventory?
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I have Hawk and Patriot in Army echelons above division ADA in about equal quantities. Following 1986-7 projections for future fielding (which is IMHO kind of the sweet spot for those projections for our purposes... it catches the pre-drawdown expectations, with the assumption of continued flow of $$$ to keep the tanks, missiles and ships rolling) its likely that Patriot would continue to be fielded at the rate of 2-3 battalions a year, leaving a fair number of HAWK in service. This also leaves some production for allies if folks want Japan, Germany and Saudi Arabia (and maybe China) to field Patriot in their T2kUs!
Besides the Hawk TDM capability, there was also the NOAH (a 1988 article about the system is
here, see p. 23) and coming online with the NATO allies is also the ground-launched AMRAAM, first fielded (again by Norway) as
NASAMS.
The whole array of US Army ADA systems in the era is really mind-boggling, especially if you use the USAVG systems (or even more than that) for the division-level assets... PIVAD on 3 platforms (towed, LAV-25 and M113), Diana, Sgt York, Chaparral, ADATS (on the LAV-75 and possibly the M113, which Canada bought IRL), Roland (truck-mounted and on a M109 chassis), Blazer (30mm gatling on a Brad chassis), Stinger (and Avenger?), the 30mm gun on the LAV-75, and maybe Duster in CONUS. And then the laser systems! What an organizational, administrative and logistical nightmare!