Conventional missile plays crucial role

  • Published
  • By Amy Welch
  • Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center Public Affairs
TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. (AFPN) --  From the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, much of the success coalition forces experienced depended largely upon the ability to inflict maximum damage to precise targets while incurring minimum risk. The plan required accurate weapons as much as skilled strategists.

One such weapon is the Conventional Air Launch Cruise Missile, a recently proven arsenal ace used more than 100 times in Iraq.

The CALCM is a converted Air Launch Cruise Missile, a nuclear weapon.

“Conversion made it possible for us to use them in the current conflict,” said Joe Peach, CALCM program manager. “We had some ALCMs … that were just in storage. What we did is put this conventional warhead on them.

“(The CALCM is) the only weapon in the Air Force inventory that has long-range standoff capability. We can put a B-52 in the air 500 miles away and launch these, and they will go directly to the target that we tell (them) to go to.”

The high-tech explosives come in two models, the C and D.

“The CALCM C warhead contains a lot of fragmentation, like a hand grenade, only with bigger chunks,” Peach said. “For example, if we use it on an airplane hangar, it would just rip the airplane to pieces and render it unusable.”

CALCM lead engineer Gary Haler explained, “It’s more of a blast effect than you get from a grenade. We were looking for that blast from overpressure to do the damage.”

The CALCM D is a penetrator missile.

“Those are the ones designed to go after hard and deeply buried targets,” Peach said. “This missile, when it impacts, is traveling at roughly 1,000 feet per second. What this does is penetrate the target. It goes inside a bunker, in a specific room and blows up once it gets inside the room and destroys everything.”

The CALCMs were developed before Operation Desert Storm as a classified project.

“There were a handful made initially, and that was all that was ever going to be made,” Peach said. “But they worked so well that we’ve made several hundred since then.”

In 1996, the CALCM was first conceptually demonstrated as a precision weapon. However, Peach said, “It was not near as accurate as it is today.”

The CALCM now has the ability to strike its intended target despite possible enemy interference efforts, Haler said.

“In the presence of jamming, we are still a precision strike weapon,” he said. “We have conducted flight tests under jamming scenarios, and the CALCM performed as expected.”

CALCMs played a significant role in the initial coalition strikes against Iraq, Peach said.

“From 500 miles away, it will go to Baghdad, find a palace and strike,” he said. “What does that do? Well, we didn’t have to put an aircraft over Baghdad. We didn’t have to put a pilot in the air over Baghdad. There was no risk of losing an aircraft or a pilot (to hostile fire).”

“It allows the warfighter to take out maybe a command and control facility inside Baghdad to soften it up so that other aircraft … can get closer,” Haler said.

The CALCM’s successes gratify Peach and Haler, they said, but its more important life-saving measures are what they really care about.

“It makes me feel good to know that our aircrews are out of harm’s way and that (the crew) can return to their family in this great country because of what we do here,” Haler said. “I think I speak for the whole team when I say we take great pride in that.”