Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
An EuroSpike engineer claimed to me that the breaking fibre problem was long since solved with engineering trickery (a material applied to the surface fo the glass fibre itself), but I learned that some people opine that infrared seekers are poor for lock on after launch (= not a good missile sensor type for finding & identifying camouflaged targets).
Not sure about this. Spike pays out the cable, so it's never under tension in the way conventional wire guidance is. Using FOG you do not have to lock off the sensor. You just put the cross-hairs on what you want to hit. No thermal image is required. That is how Spike operators train to target hatches on the top of AFVs.
If the cable breaks without an operator cued lock off, the missile just continues on the last aim point. If the target image was locked, then it will guide.
There is a new 25km version of Spike