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From Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium

The AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW), known as the "flying pig" after the last three letters of its acronym, is a long-range guided bomb developed by the United States Navy and used by the other U.S. air services and a wide range of foreign operators. Guided bombs are unpowered precision-guided munitions.^[1]

The JSOW is more expensive, but has longer range and more extensive options, than the other main U.S. guided bomb, the Joint Direct Action Munition.

"Let the pigs fly!"

– informal motto of JSOW engineers

Contents 1 Operational types 1.1 Baseline 1.2 Unitary penetrating warhead 1.3 Anti-armor cluster submunitions 1.4 Unitary blast-fragmentation warhead 2 Future 3 References

Operational types

The JSOW family currently consists of four weapon variants.

Baseline

AGM-154A JSOWs are cluster munitions that carry 145 BLU-97 dual-purpose submunitions(i.e., effective against people, and lightly armored vehicles. It is especially effective against spread-out targets such as airfields and air defense sites. Over 400 AGM-154As have been used in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Unitary penetrating warhead

A modified version of the AGM-154A, termed AGM-154A-1, replaces the cluster munition (and submunitions) with a BLU-111, which is a 500-pound bomb with a hard steel case to penetrate underground or reinforced targets.

Anti-armor cluster submunitions

The AGM-154B is a different kind of cluster munition, not designed for antipersonnel effects, which has six BLU-108B/B canisters, each of which release 4 anti-tank submunitions that can defeat much heavier armor than a dual-purpose bomblet. While development is complete, production has not started, probably due to the lack of plausible enemies with large numbers of tanks.

Unitary blast-fragmentation warhead

While both the AGM-154B and AGM-154C variant carry 500-pound bombs, the -C version is a thin case without a significant penetrating capability, doing its damage by blast and fragmentation. Thin-case bombs have more space for explosive payload.

The C-model has additional guidance, in the form of an an uncooled, long-wave imaging infrared seeker with autonomous target seeking. It became operational in February 2005.

Future

The AGM-154C-1 variant, scheduled to be operational in Fiscal Year 2010, will have a seeker capable of finding and hitting moving targets at sea.

References