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A small company in Huntsville, Ala. has sold 2,000x GBU-69 Small Glide Munitions to SOCOM. With a 20nm range, 36 lb warhead, GPS/laser-guidance, impact and airburst fuzing, this new glide bomb quickly went from concept to killer in Somalia nytimes.com/2019/03/27/mag…
Its wing provides lift, and allows it to fly quietly to its target. Three latticed "grid fins" provide guidance. Look familiar? Same company made the grid fins for GBU-43 MOAB and the GBU-57 MOP
The GBU-69 can only be deployed from something called the Common Launch Tube, made by Systima Technologies. The 4 ft long, 7" dia. CLT has been turning previously unarmed aircraft into attack platforms
Early on, CLTs were part of the Harvest HAWK program that turned Marine KC-130J tankers into gunships. Here you see two rows of five CLTs strapped to a KC-130J's cargo ramp. But using them required the crew to go on oxygen and depressurize the cabin
The Marines dropped the GBU-44 ViperStrike from the KC-130J, but found it simply took too long to reach its targets. It was an interesting second act for a bomb that started life in DARPA's Assault Breaker program as the rocket/missile-delivered BAT submunition in the early 1980s
The Navy worked on a simpler way to launch CLT weapons that didn't require depressurizing the aircraft. They came up with the "Derringer Door" -- paratroop door modified with two pressure-sealed fittings for CLTs standing side-by-side
Here’s a GBU-44 ViperStrike dropping through a Derringer Door during a live-fire test
CLT has also been mated to helicopters to fire the Griffin missile, as seen here
Like the GBU-44, Textron’s G-CLAW bomblet also started off as a submunition and was repurposed for use in the CLT. Here we see G-CLAW deployed from a Cessna Grand Caravan EX turboprop, also made by Textron — a clue to CLT’s future
Here’s slow-motion video of G-CLAW deploying from a Cessna. (both are Textron products.)
The most recent evolution in deploying CLTs appears to be the "SOPGM Door" -- for Stand-Off Precision Guided Munitions -- a modification to AC-130 ramps that allows 10x CLTs to drop through the ramp via pressure-sealed fittings, seen here in the background of this DVIDS photo
And here you can see a Griffin dropping tail-first through an AC-130’s SOPGM Door. The GBU-69s dropped on Somalia likely deployed this way as well
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