New variant of the UMPK kit with a more streamlined design and a booster rocket, giving it a claimed range of 200km
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It actually makes me wonder just how much extra weight it would need to add a spine to connect the wing kit to the turbofan engine section, a release mechanism to separate the wing kit from the bomb (mini gelatines to cut the steel straps holding the bomb should suffice) and a mini parachute. You can add an IFF beacon as well if you want to be extra safe and future proof).
This way, you basically turn the expendable wing kit into a reusable drone that aims the bomb at the target co-ordinates, separates and flys back to a predetermined friendly controlled area and deploy parachute to be recovered and used again.
The trade offs will be increased unit cost and weight, as well as reduced range if you want to recover the glide kit. But it could add up to a significant amount of savings cumulatively, as well as give you potentially additional use options. For example, you could swap the FAB out for a cluster munitions dispenser and drop cluster bombs along a trench/tree line rather than just hit a single point with a FAB.
This is the sort of thing that will have minimal demand during peace time, but something that becomes a hell of a lot more attractive in a war economy situation where you need to stretch finite resources as far as you can.
