Are there any other missiles with substantially the same capabilities from a different source? It seems likely that this would also be subject to long lead times for replacement. Just coming up to speed on this stuff, but what is the mission here?
From what I have gleaned from Noah, I think the idea is a easy to transport and use rocket artillery system that can be used against ships as well. It will be on demand shore artillery anywhere in Canada. Load it onto a c130 herc, roll off, set up, and have very convincing coverage of large areas. The current PrSM (precision strike missile) increment 2 is introducing seeker heads that can track and hit ships at see. Current range is 350km, but they plan on bumping the range up with later increments to 800km. Yet it is also a battle tested land based rocket artillery system for more conventional tactical uses (static targets, bunker buster, etc). The CAF is excited to get such a capable system that do so many different things. While the increased range hasn't been rolled out yet, I imagine that is just matter of integrating a more capable motor, and all the testing required to make sure it's trouble free. But it's important to remember that there are a number of already in production and proven load outs beside the new PrSMs. And yes, there are some other options out there (south Korea has a system that is gaining popularity, and several EU nations are working on creating a comparable system), they are either far less proven, or are still only at the prototype stage. While the NK option might be faster to get into our hands, I believe the HiMARs purchase process started before they were completely in production, and we're still a relative unknown. I believe the US has already added our HiMAR order to the build cue, so it would probably get ugly if we tried to back out now. And it would be a dumb thing for Carney to do, he would piss off his own military while expending political capital he doesn't need to with the US gov. And who knows, if we buy the KSS III subs from Korea, we might end up buying some of their rocket systems too. And there exists a world where we actually receive the Korean systems before the American systems, which would be bitterly ironic, but isn't the end of the world.
one wonders how high the cost will go on them as they roll out.
Are there any other missiles with substantially the same capabilities from a different source? It seems likely that this would also be subject to long lead times for replacement. Just coming up to speed on this stuff, but what is the mission here?
From what I have gleaned from Noah, I think the idea is a easy to transport and use rocket artillery system that can be used against ships as well. It will be on demand shore artillery anywhere in Canada. Load it onto a c130 herc, roll off, set up, and have very convincing coverage of large areas. The current PrSM (precision strike missile) increment 2 is introducing seeker heads that can track and hit ships at see. Current range is 350km, but they plan on bumping the range up with later increments to 800km. Yet it is also a battle tested land based rocket artillery system for more conventional tactical uses (static targets, bunker buster, etc). The CAF is excited to get such a capable system that do so many different things. While the increased range hasn't been rolled out yet, I imagine that is just matter of integrating a more capable motor, and all the testing required to make sure it's trouble free. But it's important to remember that there are a number of already in production and proven load outs beside the new PrSMs. And yes, there are some other options out there (south Korea has a system that is gaining popularity, and several EU nations are working on creating a comparable system), they are either far less proven, or are still only at the prototype stage. While the NK option might be faster to get into our hands, I believe the HiMARs purchase process started before they were completely in production, and we're still a relative unknown. I believe the US has already added our HiMAR order to the build cue, so it would probably get ugly if we tried to back out now. And it would be a dumb thing for Carney to do, he would piss off his own military while expending political capital he doesn't need to with the US gov. And who knows, if we buy the KSS III subs from Korea, we might end up buying some of their rocket systems too. And there exists a world where we actually receive the Korean systems before the American systems, which would be bitterly ironic, but isn't the end of the world.