Regarding the LRASM and its guidance method, consider the following:
Imagine two people trying to kill each other on a dark, sloping soccer field with other people walking in between. One has a rifle and a flashlight, the other has a bomb strapped to his body and the rifle points out the approximate location of the opponent. To see the bomber approaching, the one with the rifle needs to turn on his flashlight. After all, he can't defend himself against what he can't see. The trick is that when the flashlight is on, it acts as a guiding light for the bomber, who can approach by crawling, hidden by the slope of the field and below the flashlight's line of sight.
This puts the enemy commander in a difficult position: while he seeks to defend himself, he must turn on his radars and, in doing so, feed guidance data to the LRASM. This will work even in poor weather conditions and against stealth-cell ships, since the missile doesn't rely on radar to find its target.
The LRASM's long-range sensor, capable of "sniffing" enemy emissions, is based on ESM systems originally developed for the F-22 Raptor, the F-35 Lighting II, and the B-2 Spirit. The system has undergone extensive miniaturization. Once in an area where enemies may be operating, it begins to "sniff" RF emissions in the region, searching for any that its database lists as belonging to an enemy ship.
The LRASM's wide-angle ESM antenna can scan a wider arc in front of the missile for enemy radar emissions than an active radar, reducing the area of uncertainty. The missile is intelligent enough, via artificial intelligence, to detect new threats in its flight path, classify them, and fly around them.
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Once it gets close enough to, say, the center of an enemy task force nucleated around an aircraft carrier, it can use its IIR sensor to compare the ships ahead to a digital image library, ensuring it attacks a carrier and not a frigate. The IIR sensor also allows it to identify the most vulnerable part of a ship, such as the carrier's island or the destroyer's missile magazine. It then drops to just a few meters above the water's surface and delivers its final, highly tailored strike against the target to inflict maximum damage. In other words, in the terminal phase, the IIR sensor performs target recognition.
Essentially, the LRASM will have sufficient onboard AI to survive through automatic analysis of high-quality data from organic ESM measurements. In other words, it detects enemy electronic emissions (especially radar emissions), classifies them, geolocates them, and then calculates the most survivable route to circumvent the threat, or decides to directly attack one of these threats.
The LRASM is practically an electromagnetic black hole, with its stealthy fuselage reflecting as little electromagnetic energy as possible from radars, while the use of passive sensors and the missile's ability to network with off-board information via its data link allow it to maintain complete silence throughout its trajectory. Both characteristics drastically reduce the target's threat warning range and the effectiveness of its countermeasures.
In the US Navy, the LRASM, combined with the Super Hornet's range, will form an engagement zone of up to 2,000 km around the task force. A strike line of eight Super Hornets armed with 16 LRASMs and supported by the E-2D can eliminate any surface threat up to 2,000 km from the aircraft carrier.
With a payload capacity of 24 LRASMs, the B-1B now provides the USAF with an anti-surface warfare capability superior to any other air complex. With its payload, range, and support from the US fleet of REVO aircraft, the B-1B can threaten a task force anywhere on the planet in a matter of hours.
