SAGEM looks to arm French C-130s with AASM

[CougarKing]

This reminds me of reading about the earlier C-130s that could carry the BLU82 "Daisy Cutter" used in Vietnam.

IHS Jane's 360

Sagem looks to arm French C-130s with AASM

- 22 April 2015

Sagem is preparing to offer an armed upgrade package for the French Air Force's Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules transport aircraft, company officials told IHS Jane's .

The upgrade would include arming the Hercules with the SSA-1101 Gerfaut system, allowing the C-130 to carry and deploy as many as eight Sagem AASM (Armement Air-Sol Modulaire) precision guided munitions (PGMs). The SSA-1101 Gerfaut has been under development since 2012 by Sagem, Rafaut, and AA/ROK.

Concept image of a four weapon pylon armed with Sagem AASM 'Hammer' smart munitions for the Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules transport aircraft. Source: Sagem

Sagem is looking to pitch the AASM-armed Hercules concept to the French DGA soon. (Sagem)

 

[dimsum]

It looks like a larger version of the USMC (and USAF?) C-130s that can carry Griffin missiles.

 

[Loachman]

I am only really familiar with one of their products.

I hope that this works better than Sperwer, because that was full of surprises. Some were amusing, but most not, and very, very few were good at all.

And if this is any good, and if we decide to buy it for whatever reason, we must translate the manuals ourselves. Under no circumstances should SAGEM be allowed to do that.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

The French version of "ChinEnglish"?

 

[Loachman]

Where there were several potential translations for a given word, they would always pick the one furthest from the correct contextual meaning.

They would keep the French acronym, but translate the complete term into English, so that there was no logical connection between the two.

The system could run in either Imperial or metric systems, but not a combination of both. We needed kilometres for tactical distance measurement. Almost everybody - even the French - uses feet for altitude. All training provided by SAGEM used metric for everything. That was not an issue during work-ups in Wainwright, but ATC and the tactical controllers in KAF could, of course, comprehend only feet, and that was what everybody else's equipment was calibrated in. We had to use a conversion chart constantly.

Then there was speed measurement. What would you expect that unit of measure to be? If you guessed "knots" for Imperial, you'd be correct, but "kilometres per hour" would earn a loud, raucous buzz if you tried to go with that. Who Le Phoque uses "metres per second"? Seriously. What's your car calibrated in, silly French designer people? What about the aircraft that you guys build?

It was a French design, so some weirdness was only to be expected - and expectations were easily exceeded.

It was SAGEM's first ever attempt to build a UAV system, so many lessons were yet to be learned - and there were plenty, right up until the end.

And then, they contracted a lot of the subsystems out. Every subcontractor picked his favourite operating system for the Ground Control Station subsystem for which he was responsible. There were two versions of Windows in use, Unix, and a proprietary programme as well, among the six or seven computer systems. Nothing spoke to another, so they were all routed through a computer management unit for translation.

Surprises were too common. Logic was too uncommon.

Why would a fixed-forward daylight television camera that was only used during launch and recovery phases be in colour, but the one alongside the thermal imager in the ball and used for tactical purposes be black-and-white?

 

[Colin Parkinson]

yikes..........


thanks, I think. I feel like a drink after reading that

 

[Loachman]

We could not drink enough. Two beer per man per month.

I only touched on the simple stuff. These things' little computer brains conspired among each other while unattended in the maintenance hangar between launches.

A weird, never-before-seen, mysterious failure would occur during a pre-launch check, halting the launch while our techs (wizards, really) would attempt to diagnose and cure it. Invariably, they would swap the most likely culprit component (like the Hybrid Navigation System) or swap the whole AV for another, and the same failure would occur at the same point of the pre-launch check. More testing, and more component swaps, would be done over the following two or three weeks in order to figure out what was wrong and fix it - and then, all of a sudden, it would never happen again.