Air Weapons: The Mavericks Of Indonesia


September 13, 2012: Indonesia has bought 18 American AGM-65K2 Maverick air-to-ground missiles, 39 training missiles, maintenance equipment, and training. Mavericks cost up to $160,000 each. Indonesia is paying $25 million for the entire package, so most of the money is going in training, support, and bribes.

Indonesia is getting the digital camera version, which works well at night or in bad weather. Maverick is a "fire and forget" missile. Once the pilot picks out the target on a TV screen the missile continues to home in on the designated target without any continued pilot assistance. The 300 kg (660 pound) missile can carry a warhead of up to 138 kg (300 pounds). Indonesia will most likely use the Mavericks from their F-16s, which train to attack nobody in particular.

The Maverick has been in service since 1972. Since then, about 6,000 have been used in combat (8 percent of the 70,000 manufactured), with 93 percent of those hitting their targets. Maverick was originally designed to take out armored vehicles. In the last decade it has largely been replaced by cheaper GPS guided bombs and smaller missiles like Hellfire.




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