Tomahawk is also a very long range missile that was put in use in the Gulf War.

But I am not interested in this use. While watching a documentary of hi-tech weaponry (including the Tomahawk), I was thinking about how cool was the technology behind modern weapons, but how it sucked the war itself.

And this is my (rhetoric) question:

What if we fill a Tomahawk with medicines and food and send it to Mozambique? That would be a very fast response, but of course we would have to modify existing missiles to carry more and most important, to deliver it parachuting the cargo before the missile auto destructs in the air.
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I know it can be silly, but I think technology is/should be good and I can't stand how is wasted in destruction...

In response to naked ape, you wouldn't have to modify the technology much. There is a variant of the Tomahawk that flies over its target and then dispenses a large number of bomblets horizontally from the warhead, then crashes itself. You could probably modify it to toss medical supplies (if they were hardy) pretty easily.

So why don't we?

Because it's inefficient as all hell. If you want to send medication, using a disposable, one-shot $1 million USD delivery system to deliver at best maybe a hundred pounds of medication (after packaging) is dumb. We *have* good ways of delivering lots of medication, and we've used them all over Africa. Take a C-141 Starlifter and drop many, many tons of the stuff by parachute, for a lot less money than throwing away a single Tomahawk.

War has always advanced technology. It is a survival struggle; at least, it's the one we're left with after mostly taming the planet in the areas we choose to live. As such, it receives the lion's share of human ingenuity. I, too, have your problem- I think atomic weapons are absolutely the coolest damn things out there; however, there's no way to use them on Earth without hideous consequences. I dearly wish we could go out to, say, the asteroid belt and play with them there! I mean, hell, we can create a small piece of the sun wherever we damn well choose. That's cool as hell!

Anyhow, I content myself by reminding myself of the numbers of workers and families that eat or ate dinner due to the Tomahawk program. I think of five or ten desperately afraid American servicemen and -women pinned down, perhaps in a city such as Mogadishu, hoping that something will kill the people trying to kill them and get them out. I think of the bridges that pass Government tanks across to persecute and kill Iraqi civilians. Looking at these things, the ability to reach out and touch something like we can with the Tomahawk doesn't look too silly. It looks downright conservatively careful.

Mike Patton's another supergroup project with a sound much like Faith No More's latest 3 album (Angel Dust, King for a Day, Album of the Year). The band also features Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard, John Stanier of Helmet, Kevin Rutmanis of the Melvins. Their self-titled debut album is released in October of 2001 on Patton's own label Ipecac. The album is all aggressive and lyrics contain so many references to murder, masturbation, feces, sodomy, and perversion.
The tracks are;
1. Flashback - 2:58
2. 101 North - 5:13
3. Point and Click - 3:09
4. God Hates a Coward - 2:39
5. Pop 1 - 3:25
6. Sweet Smell of Success - 3:48
7. Sir Yes Sir - 2:09
8. Jockstrap - 3:51
9. Cul de Sac - 1:44
10. Malocchio - 2:42
11. Honeymoon - 3:07
12. Laredo - 4:16
13. Narcosis - 2:39

The BGM-109 'Tomahawk' is the longest range cruise missile currently employed by any country on earth, and the most accurate. Developed by the Americans as a non-ballistic way of delivering both conventional and nuclear ordnance, the Tomahawk is capable of levelling a small city from a remote distance of 1500 miles.

Technical Data:

WARHEAD - 1000 lbs. - Either 1000 lbs. conventional explosive / fragmentary warhead or W80 250-kiloton nuclear
RANGE - 1,553 Miles
WING SPAN - 100 Inches
LENGTH - 219 Inches
WEIGHT - 4,190 lbs.
ENGINE - Solid propellant booster / turbojet cruise, one Williams F107-400 rated at 600 lbs. thrust
GUIDANCE - TERCOM, GPS, DSMAC and infra-red
SPEED - 550 mph
COST - $1.4m to $2m dependent upon warhead used


Since its development in 1972 there have been four distinct types of Tomahawk cruise missiles. Two versions, the U.S.A.F. ground launched version and the Navy BGM-109A have been removed from the U.S. inventory - or have had the W-80 thermonuclear warhead removed and replaced with a conventional high explosive.

Although most publications list the Tomahawk accuracy at within 30 feet the real truth lies in the computer guidance system. Tomahawk is designed to fly through a one meter square window on earth at a predesignated time. The Tomahawk's direct hit record is approximately 85% over its use in the Gulf War, and further firings since then. Tomahawk uses a combination of GPS (Global Positioning Satellite), TERCOM - a special terrain way-point radar map, and two types of terminal guidance systems to place the warhead with pinpoint accuracy, DSMAC and an infra-red mapper. DSMAC is a high resolution satellite radar image of the target area which the Tomahawk follows to within feet of the intended target. An additional Infra-red scene mapper is also employed for a dual spectrum picture fed to the targeting computer.

The two conventional warheads used in the August 20, 1998 attacks on the Sudan and Afghanistan were the conventional 1,000 pound high explosive and the 1,000 pound cluster bomblet warhead which showers a target with a rain of softball-sized submunitions. The heavy warheads were used mainly against the factory in Sudan and caves or hardened bunkers in Afghanistan. The bomblet versions were deployed directly against "soft" targets such as people, trucks, buildings and lightly-armoured vehicles.

One version of the Tomahawk used in the Gulf War deployed small spools of carbon-fibre thread over Iraqi power plants and electric grids. The fiber spools unwound and fell over the live wires. The resulting shorts blew most of the Iraqi electric power grid for the remainder of the war. Iraqi efforts to clear the spools and restart the electric plants were foiled by desert winds which blew more spools back into the live wires.

Tom"a*hawk (?), n. [Of American Indian origin; cf. Algonkin tomehagen, Mohegan tumnahegan, Delaware tamoihecan.]

A kind of war hatchet used by the American Indians. It was originally made of stone, but afterwards of iron.

 

© Webster 1913.


Tom"a*hawk, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Tomahawked (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Tomahawking.]

To cut, strike, or kill, with a tomahawk.

 

© Webster 1913.

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