Precision bombing
Encyclopedia
Precision bombing is bombing of a small target with extreme accuracy, to limit side-effect damage. An example would be destroying a single building in a built up area causing minimal damage to the surroundings. Initially precision bombing was tried by both the Allied and Central Powers
during World War I
, however, it was found to be ineffective, because the technology did not allow a sufficient accuracy. Therefore, the air forces turned to area bombardment
, which inevitably brought civilian
casualties. Since then the technologies of precision-guided munition
s greatly developed, significantly used in anti-shipping missiles before being employed for general air interdiction
missions.
The "precision" of precision bombing has been relative to the time period.
from the last navigational "fix" - the bombers dropping their loads according to the ETA
for the target. The RAF soon found that accurate bombing was difficult and attacking at low level and making repeat passes over the target dangerous in the face of anti-aircraft guns and fighters.
Photo-reconnaissance was developed to assess post bombing damage; it was the Butt Report
that exposed the limits of RAF bombing accuracy. The move to night attacks reduced bomber losses to defences but affected accuracy again.
For the US Air Force, daylight bombing was normal based upon box formations for defence from fighters. Bombing was coordinated through a lead aircraft but although still nominally precision bombing (as opposed to the area bombing carried out by RAF Bomber Command
) the result of bombing from high level was still spread over an area. The US daytime bombing raids were more effective in reducing German defences by engaging the German Luftwaffe than destruction of the means of aircraft production.
In the summer of 1944, 47 B-29's raided the Yawata steel works from bases in China; only one plane actually hit the target area, and only with one of its bombs. This single 500 lb (226.8 kg) general purpose bomb represented one quarter of one percent of the 376 bombs dropped over Yawata on that mission. It took 108 B-17 bombers, crewed by 1,080 airmen, dropping 648 bombs to guarantee a 96 percent chance of getting just two hits inside a 400 x 500 ft (152.4 m) German power-generation plant.
, the capabilities of "smart" aeroplanes dropping dumb bombs from low altitudes were sufficient to place an unguided munition within 30 feet (9.1 m) of a target. However, Iraq
i air defenses in the Kuwait
theater of operations, characterized by large numbers of man-portable air-defense systems, surface-to-air missile
s and rapid-firing light antiaircraft cannon, simply would not permit such routine use of the low altitude operating environment. Operations from medium altitudes (15,000 ft and higher) at longer slant ranges severely complicated bombing accuracy, particularly against targets that required essentially a direct hit to be destroyed, such as hangars, bunkers, tanks, and artillery. As one analytical study concluded:
Adding to this problem has been a generalized lack of appreciation of how warfare has changed since World War II. On the eve of the Gulf War, for example, critics of proposed military action posited scenarios where tens of thousands of Iraqis would be killed by largely indiscriminate air attacks that would "carpet bomb" population centers, particularly Baghdad.
On "opening night" of the Gulf War, Baghdad
was struck by two kinds of precision attackers: ship-launched cruise missile
s, and aircraft-launched laser-guided bomb
s.
In the best-known example from the Gulf War, well-publicized attacks against bridges in downtown Baghdad, coupled with a precision attack against the Al Firdos command and control bunker that killed several hundred individuals using it as a shelter, generated a political reaction that included shutting down the strategic air campaign against Baghdad for ten days. The well-publicized precision bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade led to an international outcry, riots in Beijing, and serious international diplomatic repercussions between the People's Republic of China
and the United States
. The CIA admitted it directed the operation, claiming a targeting error occurred, and both the aircrew and equipment were cleared of blame.
Given the nature of precision weapon war
fare, education of decision-makers as to their capabilities and limitations is critically important. (And, beyond this, it is particularly true for air warfare in general, for air power has some unique attributes and advantages, though, in one critically important respect, it is like other forms of military power: it should be used to achieve decisive effects, not as a means of merely sending signals or "feel good" sporadic blows). With the rapidly changing state of such technology, it is incumbent that military and defense organizations offer interested individuals opportunities to become acquainted with the broad capabilities of modern military systems. This is particularly true for precision weaponry, for such weaponry has already demonstrated that, in particular circumstances, cherished notions of how wars are to be fought and the enduring value of such military constructs as the linear battlefield are questionable at best or even archaic.
that govern their use.
Historical experience with precision guided munitions dates back over fifty years; there is a considerable body of historical experience that suggests how precision weapons have dramatically transformed military affairs. The precision weapon era dates to May 12, 1943, when a Royal Air Force Liberator patrol bomber dropped a Mk. 24 acoustic homing torpedo that subsequently seriously damaged the U-456, driving it to the surface where it was subsequently sunk by convoy escort vessels. On September 9, 1943, a German Fritz-X radio-guided glide bomb dropped from a Dornier Do 217 bomber sank the modern Italian
battleship
Roma as it steamed towards Gibraltar
. Two months later, an antishipping missile launched from a Heinkel He 177
sank a British troopship
with the loss of 1,190 American soldiers, one of the greatest of all maritime disasters. By war's end, Germany
and the United States had employed various proto-smart weapons in combat, including radio, radar, and television-guided bombs and missiles, against targets ranging from industrial sites to bridges and enemy shipping.
Although not often thought of as a precision weapon, the various Kamikaze
attackers that first appeared in the fall of 1944 functioned much like modern antishipping missiles, and thus can legitimately be considered a part of the precision weapon story. The Kamikaze was the deadliest aerial antishipping threat faced by Allied surface warfare
forces in the war. Approximately 2,800 Kamikaze attackers sunk 34 Navy
ships, damaged 368 others, killed 4,900 sailor
s, and wounded over 4,800. Despite radar
detection and cuing, airborne interception and attrition, and massive antiaircraft barrages, a distressing 14 percent of Kamikazes survived to score a hit on a ship; nearly 8.5 percent of all ships hit by Kamikazes sank. As soon as they appeared, then, Kamikazes revealed their power to force significant changes in Allied naval planning and operations, despite relatively small numbers. Clearly, like the antishipping cruise missile of a later era, the Kamikaze had the potential to influence events all out of proportion to its actual strength.
The need to destroy precision targets such as bridges had driven development of rudimentary guided bombs in the Second World War, and Korea
accelerated this interest. In Korea, Air Force B-29's dropped the Razon and the much larger and more powerful Tarzon guided bombs on North Korea
n bridges, destroying at least 19 of them. The disappointing Korean bridge-bombing experience stimulated the Navy to pursue development of the postwar Bullpup program, the first mass-produced air to surface guided missile
.
Accompanying this interest in Anti-Surface Warfare
, was an equivalent drive to develop precision air-to-surface and surface to surface weapons for antishipping roles. In particular, the Soviet Union
pursued development of such weapons as a means of countering the tremendous maritime supremacy of the Western alliance during the Cold War
. One of the most significant events in the history of precision weaponry occurred on October 25, 1967, when the Israel
i destroyer Eilat, patrolling 15 miles (24.1 km) off Port Said
, was sunk by four Soviet-made Styx antishipping missiles fired from an Egypt
ian missile boat, killing or wounding 99 of its crew. The sinking of the Eilat had profound impact; one surface warfare officer remarked that "it was reveille" to the surface Navy." One senior American naval officer called the potential Styx threat his "worst nightmare."
The Soviet Union's alarming investment antiship missiles stimulated a tremendous investment in countermeasures. It influenced the purchase of the Grumman F-14 Tomcat
, as well as more advanced airborne and surface early warning radars and fire control systems, and new gun and surface to air missile systems. But despite such corrective measures, the problems posed by newer generations of weapons continue to confront naval planners in the present day. Indeed, it can be argued that, at best, defensive measures have kept up with the threat, not surpassed it.
As the antishipping missile transformed war at sea, the advent of the laser-guided bomb
revolutionized precision land attack, for it could function with an average circular error of less than twenty feet from the aim point. With this kind of accuracy, the need to operate mass flights of aircraft against a single aim point at last disappeared; it was as revolutionary a development in military air power terms as, say, the jet engine or aerial refueling. Even more significantly, an aircraft dropping a laser-guided bomb could drop it from outside the majority of an enemy's air defenses, thus further reducing the likelihood of incurring losses to enemy defenses. The modern precision weapon era may be said to have begun in May 1972, when laser-guided-bomb-armed McDonnell F-4 Phantom
s perfunctorily took down the Paul Doumer and Thanh Hoa bridges in North Vietnam, as part of a larger campaign that shattered North Vietnam's invasion of South Vietnam in the spring of that year.
s against air defense and command and control facilities
essentially opened up Iraq
for subsequent conventional attackers. Precision attacks against the Iraqi air force destroyed it in its hangars, and precipitated an attempted mass exodus of aircraft to Iran
. Key precision weapon attacks against bridges served to "channelize" the movement of Iraqi forces and create fatal bottlenecks, and many Iraqis, in frustration, simply abandoned their vehicles and walked away. Overall, postwar analysis indicated that Iraq's ability to move supplies from Baghdad to the Kuwait
i theater of operations had dropped from a total potential capacity of 216,000 metric tons per day over a total of six main routes (including a rail line) to only 20,000 metric tons per day over only two routes, a nearly 91 percent reduction in capacity; all others (including the railroad) had essentially been destroyed. What shipments did occur were haphazard, slow, and carried in single vehicles that were themselves so often destroyed that many Iraqi drivers simply refused to drive to the KTO. This destruction had taken place in an astonishingly short time; whereas, in previous non-precision interdiction
campaigns, it often took hundreds of sortie
s to destroy a bridge, in the Gulf War precision weapons destroyed 41 of 54 key Iraqi bridges, as well as 31 pontoon bridge
s hastily constructed by the Iraqis in response to the anti-bridge strikes, in approximately four weeks.
In the Gulf War, only 9 percent of the tonnage expended on Iraqi forces by American airmen were precision munitions. Not quite half of this percentage—4.3 percent—consisted of laser-guided bombs, credited with causing approximately 75 percent of the serious damage inflicted upon Iraqi strategic and operational targets. The remaining precision munitions consisted of specialized air-to-surface missiles such as the Maverick
and the Hellfire
, as well as cruise missiles, anti-radar missile
s, and assorted small numbers of special weapons. It was, overall, the laser-guided bomb that dominated both the battlefield, the counter-air campaign against Iraqi airfields, strikes against command and control and leadership targets, and the anti-bridge and rail campaign. As the Gulf War Air Power Survey concluded,
"Against point targets, laser-guided bombs offered distinct advantages over "dumb" bombs. The most obvious was that the guided bombs could correct for ballistic and release errors in flight. Explosive loads could also be more accurately tailored for the target, since the planner could assume most bombs would strike in the place and manner expected. Unlike 'dumb' bombs, LGB's released from medium to high altitude were highly accurate. . . . Desert Storm reconfirmed that LGB's possessed a near single-bomb target-destruction capability, an unprecedented if not revolutionary development in aerial arfare."
In particular, the advent of routine around-the-clock laser bombing of fielded enemy forces in the Gulf War constituted a new phase in the history of air warfare. These attacks were not classic close air support, or battlefield air interdiction, but, instead, given the level of accomplishment over time, went far beyond the levels of effectiveness traditionally implied by such terms. Indeed, the vast majority were made in the 39 days prior to the ground operation when the coalition's land forces were, for the most part, waiting for their war to begin. Yet the Iraqi army was, in effect, mortally wounded in this time. These attacks, against Iraq's mechanized formations and artillery, can best be described as a form of strategic attack directed against unengaged but fielded enemy forces, what might be termed DEA: "Degrade Enemy Army." The combination of laser-guided bombs from F-111F
's and F-15E
's, together with Maverick missiles using imaging infrared thermal sensors fired by A-10
's and F-16
's were devastating, as were laser-guided bombs from British Tornadoes and Buccaneers, and AS-30L laser-guided missiles fired from French Air Force
Jaguars. Particularly deadly were F-111F night "tank plinking" strikes using 500 lb (226.8 kg). GBU-12 laser-guided bombs. On February 9, for example, in one night of concentrated air attacks, forty F-111F's destroyed over 100 armored vehicles. Overall, the small 66-plane F-111F force was credited with 1,500 kills of Iraqi tanks and other mechanized vehicles. Air attacks by F-15E's and Marine A-6E's
in the easternmost section of the theater averaged over thirty artillery pieces or armored vehicles destroyed per night.
Once attack helicopter
s attached to surface forces entered battle, they demonstrated that such results were not limited to fixed-wing attackers. At sea, Royal Navy
and U.S. Navy helicopters destroyed numerous Iraqi small boats and military craft; fourteen of fifteen British Aerospace Sea Skua antishipping missiles launched from Westland Lynx helicopters hit their targets, a hit rate of over 93 percent. French, British, and American gunships destroyed numerous Iraqi mechanized vehicles. McDonnell AH-64A Apache
crews of one U.S. Army aviation brigade destroyed approximately fifty Iraqi tanks in a single encounter. Another Apache unit scored 102 hits for the expenditure of 107 Hellfire missiles, a hit rate of better than 95 percent. (Overall, Apache gunship
s destroyed nearly 950 Iraqi tanks, personnel carriers, and miscellaneous vehicles).
The reaction of Iraqi forces to direct precision air attacks indicated that the traditional powerful psychological impact of air attack had, at last, been matched by the equally powerful impact of actual destruction. What can be identified can be targeted so precisely that unnecessary casualties are not inflicted upon an opponent. In short, war, the great waster of human life, is now significantly more humane. Increasingly, war is more about destroying or incapacitating things as opposed to people. It is now about pursuing an effects-based strategy, rather than an annihilation-based strategy, a strategy that one can control an opponent without having to destroy him. Further, in the precision engagement era, what has changed most dramatically has been the time scale and level of effort required to achieve decisive effects over an opponent. Today, planners are far less concerned about the number of sorties required to destroy a target; rather, they emphasize the number of targets destroyed per sortie as the metric that must be considered.
operations, against Bosnian
Serbia
n forces in the former Yugoslavia
. A total of 293 aircraft based at fifteen European locations and operating from three aircraft carrier
s flew 3,515 sorties in Operation Deliberate Force, to deter Serbian aggression. Somewhat less than 700 of these sorties targeted command and control, supporting lines of communication, direct and essential targets, fielded forces, and integrated air defenses. A total of 67 percent of all such targets engaged were destroyed; 14 percent experienced moderate to severe damage, 16 percent light damage, and only 3 percent were judged to have experienced no damage.
In contrast to the Gulf War, the vast majority of NATO munitions employed in the Bosnian conflict were precision ones: in fact, over 98 percent of those used by American forces. American forces employed a total of 622 precision munitions, consisting of 567 laser-guided bombs, 42 electro-optical or infrared-guided weapons, and 13 Tomahawk
Land Attack cruise missile
s. American airmen dropped only 12 "dumb" bombs. Precision weaponry accounted for 28 percent of NATO munitions dropped by non-US attackers. Sorties by Spanish
, French
, and British
strike aircraft dropped 86 laser-guided bombs, and French, Italian, Dutch, and United Kingdom attackers dropped 306 "dumb" bombs. Overall, combining both the American and non-American experience in Bosnia, there were 708 precision weapons employed by NATO forces, and 318 non-precision ones; thus precision weaponry accounted for 69 percent of the total employed in the NATO air campaign. Combined statistics of American and NATO experience indicate that the average number of precision weapons per designated mean point of impact (DMPI) destroyed was 2.8. In contrast, the average number of "dumb" general purpose bombs per DMPI destroyed was 6.6. The average number of attack sorties per DMPI destroyed was 1.5.
As a result of NATO's first sustained air strike operations, all military and political objectives were attained: safe areas were no longer under attack or threatened, heavy weapons had been removed from designated areas, and Sarajevo
's airport could once again open, as could road access to the city. More importantly, the path to a peace agreement had been secured. In total, for an overall expenditure of approximately 64 weapons per day—69 percent (44) of which were precision weapons—NATO forces achieved their military and political objectives. The leverage that this weaponry gave over Balkan aggressors and the recognition of what precision air attack means to decision-makers in the modern world was enunciated by former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke
after the conclusion of the campaign and the settlement of the Dayton Peace Accords:
"One of the great things that people should have learned from this is that there are times when air power--not backed up by ground troops--can make a difference."
The key, of course, is in the targeting
, for air power is like other forms of military power projection in one important regard: namely, to achieve best effect, it must be used overwhelmingly, as part of a well-thought-out strategy, and not merely as a tool of diplomatic signal-sending. Put another way, if the foe is targeted effectively, the foe will get the message. This has been, of course, one of the great concerns we have seen in the current air campaign over Yugoslavia
and Kosovo
, namely whether the air effort being expended is consistent with what prudent use of air power teaches us from the past.
Holbrooke's statement hints at one of the major effects of precision, namely that the traditional notion of massing a large ground force to confront an opponent, particularly on a "field of battle" is now rendered archaic. To a degree, throughout military history, the span of influence of ground forces was always spreading out the battle area at the expense of "mass." As the zone of lethality an individual soldier could command increased, the spacing between soldiers expanded as well. But the precision attacker overcomes the expansion of the linear battlefield by exercising the ability to undertake individual targeting at ranges far in excess of even the most powerful artillery. Thus airplanes, "smart" ballistic missile
s, or cruise missiles, launched hundreds of miles away from a front-line, can then pass beyond that front-line for a distance of hundreds of miles more before targeting some key enemy facility or capability that directly influences the success of enemy operations at the front itself. This is true flexibility, of a sort again unknown to previous military eras. Further, it speaks to a changing paradigm in warfare: from the classic infantry-armor paradigm to a paradigm emphasizing remote fires: air and artillery.
in typical Third World
crisis conditions indicate that precision offers very high leverage whether one is dealing with a mechanized force, a guerrilla-type army in a wooded or jungle environment, or, even, an individual urban sniper
à la Sarajevo. The combination of new and enhanced sensor
technology, coupled with information exchange between targeting systems and strike aircraft, helicopters, or smart missiles, can defeat threats that, in previous times, were considered too difficult to thwart without greatly widening a war effort.
Even light infantry forces generate by their operations and equipment a variety of detectable signatures—visual, chemical, infrared, electromagnetic, radar, and acoustic—that render them vulnerable to a range of active radar
sensor systems (such as synthetic aperture, moving target indicator, and foliage penetrating radars), and passive air (and air-deployed ground-based) sensors (such as low light level TV, thermal imagers, multispectral analyzers, engine electrical ignition, and magnetic field detectors). These signatures betray the location and, indeed, strength of enemy forces, enabling targeting systems to then direct air attacks against them.
The capabilities of new detection systems are remarkable by the standards of previous conflict. One countersniper ballistic analyzer, the Lifeguard sniper location system developed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories
, detects a sniper's bullet after the round has been fired, analyzes its flight path, and then establishes the bullet track back to its point of origin, all virtually instantaneously, and with an accuracy of within 2 foot (0.6096 m) of where the sniper is actually located. If multiple analyzers are present, this track can be refined to within one inch. With this capability, even a sniper operating in the midst of a crowded urban environment is not immune to reprisal—for example, a helicopter gunship firing its cannon on precise coordinates, or a strike aircraft releasing a laser-guided soft and lightweight sticky foam bomb that could burst in a room and kill or disable a sniper without damaging or endangering the surrounding structure or building inhabitants.
In this regard, it is worth quickly reviewing a few salient points from the military history of this century. Within roughly a decade of the first flight of an airplane, aircraft were having an occasionally decisive effect on the battlefield. Within four decades, a nation—Great Britain—secured its national survival through air warfare. By the midst of the Second World War, three-dimensional attack (from above and below the surface) had become the primary means of sinking both vessels at sea and destroying the combat capability of armies on land. In fact, for the United States, this trend of inflicting losses and material destruction primarily through air attack continued into the postwar years for Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, Bosnia, and other, lesser, contingencies. In particular, air attack directed against land forces has been especially powerful in blunting and destroying opponents on the offensive, whether in older experience—such as confronting Rommel in the Western Desert, or Nazi armored forces trying to split the Normandy invasion at Mortain, or at the Bulge (where German commanders credited Allied fighter attacks on fuel trucks and supplies as being the decisive factor in halting their drive), in the opening and closing stages of the Korean War, and confronting the 1972 North Vietnamese Spring Invasion—or, more recently, in destroying the Khafji offensive of Saddam Hussein in 1991. NATO's reliance upon air power in the present Balkan crisis should not be surprising, for, from the very earliest days, the NATO alliance saw air power as the linchpin of Western military strength, and the necessary off-set to the Warsaw Pact's huge military forces.
Given its historical underpinnings, we should not be surprised that the revolution in warfare that has been brought about both by the confluence of the aerospace and the electronic revolutions, and by the off-shoot of both—the precision guided munition—is one that has been a long-time coming, back to the Second World War, back, even, to the experimenters of the First World War who attempted, however crudely, to develop "smart" weapons to launch from airships and other craft. Used almost experimentally until the latter stages of the Vietnam War
, the precision weapon since that time has increasingly come to first influence, then dominate, and now perhaps to render superfluous, the traditional notion of a linear battlefield.
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, however, it was found to be ineffective, because the technology did not allow a sufficient accuracy. Therefore, the air forces turned to area bombardment
Area bombardment
In military aviation, area bombardment is aerial bombardment targeted indiscriminately at a large area, such as a city block or an entire city.Area bombing is a form of strategic bombing...
, which inevitably brought civilian
Civilian
A civilian under international humanitarian law is a person who is not a member of his or her country's armed forces or other militia. Civilians are distinct from combatants. They are afforded a degree of legal protection from the effects of war and military occupation...
casualties. Since then the technologies of precision-guided munition
Precision-guided munition
A precision-guided munition is a guided munition intended to precisely hit a specific target, and to minimize damage to things other than the target....
s greatly developed, significantly used in anti-shipping missiles before being employed for general air interdiction
Air interdiction
Air interdiction is the use of aircraft to attack tactical ground targets that are not in close proximity to friendly ground forces. It differs from close air support because it does not directly support ground operations and is not closely coordinated with ground units...
missions.
History
Precision has always been recognized as an important attribute of weapon development. The noted military theorist, strategist, and historian Major-General J. F. C. Fuller, considered "accuracy of aim" one of the five recognizable attributes of weaponry, together with range of action, striking power, volume of fire, and portability.The "precision" of precision bombing has been relative to the time period.
Second World War
At the start of the Second World War, bombers were expected to strike by daylight to give the best accuracy and to avoid civilian casualties. Cloud cover and industrial haze frequently obscured targets so bomb release was made by dead reckoningDead reckoning
In navigation, dead reckoning is the process of calculating one's current position by using a previously determined position, or fix, and advancing that position based upon known or estimated speeds over elapsed time, and course...
from the last navigational "fix" - the bombers dropping their loads according to the ETA
Estimated time of arrival
The estimated time of arrival or ETA is a measure of when a ship, vehicle, aircraft, cargo, emergency service or computer file is expected to arrive at a certain place...
for the target. The RAF soon found that accurate bombing was difficult and attacking at low level and making repeat passes over the target dangerous in the face of anti-aircraft guns and fighters.
Photo-reconnaissance was developed to assess post bombing damage; it was the Butt Report
Butt Report
The Butt Report was a report prepared during World War II which revealed the widespread failure of bombers to deliver their payloads to the correct target....
that exposed the limits of RAF bombing accuracy. The move to night attacks reduced bomber losses to defences but affected accuracy again.
For the US Air Force, daylight bombing was normal based upon box formations for defence from fighters. Bombing was coordinated through a lead aircraft but although still nominally precision bombing (as opposed to the area bombing carried out by RAF Bomber Command
RAF Bomber Command
RAF Bomber Command controlled the RAF's bomber forces from 1936 to 1968. During World War II the command destroyed a significant proportion of Nazi Germany's industries and many German cities, and in the 1960s stood at the peak of its postwar military power with the V bombers and a supplemental...
) the result of bombing from high level was still spread over an area. The US daytime bombing raids were more effective in reducing German defences by engaging the German Luftwaffe than destruction of the means of aircraft production.
In the summer of 1944, 47 B-29's raided the Yawata steel works from bases in China; only one plane actually hit the target area, and only with one of its bombs. This single 500 lb (226.8 kg) general purpose bomb represented one quarter of one percent of the 376 bombs dropped over Yawata on that mission. It took 108 B-17 bombers, crewed by 1,080 airmen, dropping 648 bombs to guarantee a 96 percent chance of getting just two hits inside a 400 x 500 ft (152.4 m) German power-generation plant.
Gulf War
By the time of the Gulf WarGulf War
The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
, the capabilities of "smart" aeroplanes dropping dumb bombs from low altitudes were sufficient to place an unguided munition within 30 feet (9.1 m) of a target. However, Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
i air defenses in the Kuwait
Kuwait
The State of Kuwait is a sovereign Arab state situated in the north-east of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south at Khafji, and Iraq to the north at Basra. It lies on the north-western shore of the Persian Gulf. The name Kuwait is derived from the...
theater of operations, characterized by large numbers of man-portable air-defense systems, surface-to-air missile
Surface-to-air missile
A surface-to-air missile or ground-to-air missile is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft or other missiles...
s and rapid-firing light antiaircraft cannon, simply would not permit such routine use of the low altitude operating environment. Operations from medium altitudes (15,000 ft and higher) at longer slant ranges severely complicated bombing accuracy, particularly against targets that required essentially a direct hit to be destroyed, such as hangars, bunkers, tanks, and artillery. As one analytical study concluded:
Medium and high-altitude bombing with unguided munitions posed problems, even with digital smart platforms. Using smart platforms to deliver dumb bombs against point targets smaller than the circular error probable (CEP) may well require redundant targeting.
Adding to this problem has been a generalized lack of appreciation of how warfare has changed since World War II. On the eve of the Gulf War, for example, critics of proposed military action posited scenarios where tens of thousands of Iraqis would be killed by largely indiscriminate air attacks that would "carpet bomb" population centers, particularly Baghdad.
On "opening night" of the Gulf War, Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
was struck by two kinds of precision attackers: ship-launched cruise missile
Cruise missile
A cruise missile is a guided missile that carries an explosive payload and is propelled, usually by a jet engine, towards a land-based or sea-based target. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhead over long distances with high accuracy...
s, and aircraft-launched laser-guided bomb
Laser-guided bomb
A laser-guided bomb is a guided bomb that uses semi-active laser homing to strike a designated target with greater accuracy than an unguided bomb. LGBs are one of the most common and widespread guided bombs, used by a large number of the world's air forces.- Overview :Laser-guided munitions use a...
s.
In the best-known example from the Gulf War, well-publicized attacks against bridges in downtown Baghdad, coupled with a precision attack against the Al Firdos command and control bunker that killed several hundred individuals using it as a shelter, generated a political reaction that included shutting down the strategic air campaign against Baghdad for ten days. The well-publicized precision bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade led to an international outcry, riots in Beijing, and serious international diplomatic repercussions between the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The CIA admitted it directed the operation, claiming a targeting error occurred, and both the aircrew and equipment were cleared of blame.
Given the nature of precision weapon war
War
War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
fare, education of decision-makers as to their capabilities and limitations is critically important. (And, beyond this, it is particularly true for air warfare in general, for air power has some unique attributes and advantages, though, in one critically important respect, it is like other forms of military power: it should be used to achieve decisive effects, not as a means of merely sending signals or "feel good" sporadic blows). With the rapidly changing state of such technology, it is incumbent that military and defense organizations offer interested individuals opportunities to become acquainted with the broad capabilities of modern military systems. This is particularly true for precision weaponry, for such weaponry has already demonstrated that, in particular circumstances, cherished notions of how wars are to be fought and the enduring value of such military constructs as the linear battlefield are questionable at best or even archaic.
Historical experience through Vietnam
The precision weapon, within generalized boundaries, will perform roughly equally well in all circumstances, provided a target can be identified. Time scales may change and levels of effort may change, but the end result—a victory for the force making the best use of precision—is unlikely to change unless other factors (such as loss of national will, changing international support, "wild cards," etc.) enter play. The single most important factor is how well the decision-maker, both military and political, appreciates what precision weapons can and cannot accomplish, what mechanism or process has been established to assess the appropriateness of their use, and the rules of engagementRules of engagement
Rules of Engagement refers to those responses that are permitted in the employment of military personnel during operations or in the course of their duties. These rules of engagement are determined by the legal framework within which these duties are being carried out...
that govern their use.
Historical experience with precision guided munitions dates back over fifty years; there is a considerable body of historical experience that suggests how precision weapons have dramatically transformed military affairs. The precision weapon era dates to May 12, 1943, when a Royal Air Force Liberator patrol bomber dropped a Mk. 24 acoustic homing torpedo that subsequently seriously damaged the U-456, driving it to the surface where it was subsequently sunk by convoy escort vessels. On September 9, 1943, a German Fritz-X radio-guided glide bomb dropped from a Dornier Do 217 bomber sank the modern Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
battleship
Battleship
A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers. As the largest armed ships in a fleet, battleships were used to attain command of the sea and represented the apex of a...
Roma as it steamed towards Gibraltar
Gibraltar
Gibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...
. Two months later, an antishipping missile launched from a Heinkel He 177
Heinkel He 177
The Heinkel He 177 Greif was the only operational long-range bomber to be operated by the Luftwaffe. Starting its existence as Germany's first purpose-built heavy bomber just before the war, and built in large numbers during World War II, it was also mistakenly tasked, right from its beginnings,...
sank a British troopship
Troopship
A troopship is a ship used to carry soldiers, either in peacetime or wartime...
with the loss of 1,190 American soldiers, one of the greatest of all maritime disasters. By war's end, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and the United States had employed various proto-smart weapons in combat, including radio, radar, and television-guided bombs and missiles, against targets ranging from industrial sites to bridges and enemy shipping.
Although not often thought of as a precision weapon, the various Kamikaze
Kamikaze
The were suicide attacks by military aviators from the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, designed to destroy as many warships as possible....
attackers that first appeared in the fall of 1944 functioned much like modern antishipping missiles, and thus can legitimately be considered a part of the precision weapon story. The Kamikaze was the deadliest aerial antishipping threat faced by Allied surface warfare
Surface warfare
Modern naval warfare is divided into three operational areas: surface warfare, air warfare and submarine warfare. Each area comprises specialized platforms and strategies used to exploit tactical advantages unique and inherent to that area....
forces in the war. Approximately 2,800 Kamikaze attackers sunk 34 Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
ships, damaged 368 others, killed 4,900 sailor
Sailor
A sailor, mariner, or seaman is a person who navigates water-borne vessels or assists in their operation, maintenance, or service. The term can apply to professional mariners, military personnel, and recreational sailors as well as a plethora of other uses...
s, and wounded over 4,800. Despite radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
detection and cuing, airborne interception and attrition, and massive antiaircraft barrages, a distressing 14 percent of Kamikazes survived to score a hit on a ship; nearly 8.5 percent of all ships hit by Kamikazes sank. As soon as they appeared, then, Kamikazes revealed their power to force significant changes in Allied naval planning and operations, despite relatively small numbers. Clearly, like the antishipping cruise missile of a later era, the Kamikaze had the potential to influence events all out of proportion to its actual strength.
The need to destroy precision targets such as bridges had driven development of rudimentary guided bombs in the Second World War, and Korea
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
accelerated this interest. In Korea, Air Force B-29's dropped the Razon and the much larger and more powerful Tarzon guided bombs on North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
n bridges, destroying at least 19 of them. The disappointing Korean bridge-bombing experience stimulated the Navy to pursue development of the postwar Bullpup program, the first mass-produced air to surface guided missile
Guided Missile
Guided Missile is a London based independent record label set up by Paul Kearney in 1994.Guided Missile has always focused on 'the underground', preferring to put out a steady flow of releases and developing the numerous GM events around London and beyond....
.
Accompanying this interest in Anti-Surface Warfare
Anti-Surface Warfare
Anti-surface warfare is a type of naval warfare directed against surface combatants. More generally, it is any weapons, sensors, or operations intended to attack or limit the effectiveness of an adversary's surface ships....
, was an equivalent drive to develop precision air-to-surface and surface to surface weapons for antishipping roles. In particular, the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
pursued development of such weapons as a means of countering the tremendous maritime supremacy of the Western alliance during the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. One of the most significant events in the history of precision weaponry occurred on October 25, 1967, when the Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i destroyer Eilat, patrolling 15 miles (24.1 km) off Port Said
Port Said
Port Said is a city that lies in north east Egypt extending about 30 km along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, north of the Suez Canal, with an approximate population of 603,787...
, was sunk by four Soviet-made Styx antishipping missiles fired from an Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
ian missile boat, killing or wounding 99 of its crew. The sinking of the Eilat had profound impact; one surface warfare officer remarked that "it was reveille" to the surface Navy." One senior American naval officer called the potential Styx threat his "worst nightmare."
The Soviet Union's alarming investment antiship missiles stimulated a tremendous investment in countermeasures. It influenced the purchase of the Grumman F-14 Tomcat
F-14 Tomcat
The Grumman F-14 Tomcat is a supersonic, twin-engine, two-seat, variable-sweep wing fighter aircraft. The Tomcat was developed for the United States Navy's Naval Fighter Experimental program following the collapse of the F-111B project...
, as well as more advanced airborne and surface early warning radars and fire control systems, and new gun and surface to air missile systems. But despite such corrective measures, the problems posed by newer generations of weapons continue to confront naval planners in the present day. Indeed, it can be argued that, at best, defensive measures have kept up with the threat, not surpassed it.
As the antishipping missile transformed war at sea, the advent of the laser-guided bomb
Laser-guided bomb
A laser-guided bomb is a guided bomb that uses semi-active laser homing to strike a designated target with greater accuracy than an unguided bomb. LGBs are one of the most common and widespread guided bombs, used by a large number of the world's air forces.- Overview :Laser-guided munitions use a...
revolutionized precision land attack, for it could function with an average circular error of less than twenty feet from the aim point. With this kind of accuracy, the need to operate mass flights of aircraft against a single aim point at last disappeared; it was as revolutionary a development in military air power terms as, say, the jet engine or aerial refueling. Even more significantly, an aircraft dropping a laser-guided bomb could drop it from outside the majority of an enemy's air defenses, thus further reducing the likelihood of incurring losses to enemy defenses. The modern precision weapon era may be said to have begun in May 1972, when laser-guided-bomb-armed McDonnell F-4 Phantom
F-4 Phantom II
The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II is a tandem two-seat, twin-engined, all-weather, long-range supersonic jet interceptor fighter/fighter-bomber originally developed for the United States Navy by McDonnell Aircraft. It first entered service in 1960 with the U.S. Navy. Proving highly adaptable,...
s perfunctorily took down the Paul Doumer and Thanh Hoa bridges in North Vietnam, as part of a larger campaign that shattered North Vietnam's invasion of South Vietnam in the spring of that year.
Precision attack in the Gulf War
The first Gulf War showed how radically precision attack had transformed the traditional notion of running a military campaign and, especially, an air campaign. On opening night of the war, attacks by strike aircraft and cruise missileCruise missile
A cruise missile is a guided missile that carries an explosive payload and is propelled, usually by a jet engine, towards a land-based or sea-based target. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhead over long distances with high accuracy...
s against air defense and command and control facilities
C4ISTAR
In military usage, a number of abbreviations in the format C followed by additional letters are used, based on expanded versions of the abbreviation C2 - command and control.C2I stands for command, control, and intelligence....
essentially opened up Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
for subsequent conventional attackers. Precision attacks against the Iraqi air force destroyed it in its hangars, and precipitated an attempted mass exodus of aircraft to Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
. Key precision weapon attacks against bridges served to "channelize" the movement of Iraqi forces and create fatal bottlenecks, and many Iraqis, in frustration, simply abandoned their vehicles and walked away. Overall, postwar analysis indicated that Iraq's ability to move supplies from Baghdad to the Kuwait
Kuwait
The State of Kuwait is a sovereign Arab state situated in the north-east of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south at Khafji, and Iraq to the north at Basra. It lies on the north-western shore of the Persian Gulf. The name Kuwait is derived from the...
i theater of operations had dropped from a total potential capacity of 216,000 metric tons per day over a total of six main routes (including a rail line) to only 20,000 metric tons per day over only two routes, a nearly 91 percent reduction in capacity; all others (including the railroad) had essentially been destroyed. What shipments did occur were haphazard, slow, and carried in single vehicles that were themselves so often destroyed that many Iraqi drivers simply refused to drive to the KTO. This destruction had taken place in an astonishingly short time; whereas, in previous non-precision interdiction
Air interdiction
Air interdiction is the use of aircraft to attack tactical ground targets that are not in close proximity to friendly ground forces. It differs from close air support because it does not directly support ground operations and is not closely coordinated with ground units...
campaigns, it often took hundreds of sortie
Sortie
Sortie is a term for deployment or dispatch of one military unit, be it an aircraft, ship, or troops from a strongpoint. The sortie, whether by one or more aircraft or vessels, usually has a specific mission....
s to destroy a bridge, in the Gulf War precision weapons destroyed 41 of 54 key Iraqi bridges, as well as 31 pontoon bridge
Pontoon bridge
A pontoon bridge or floating bridge is a bridge that floats on water and in which barge- or boat-like pontoons support the bridge deck and its dynamic loads. While pontoon bridges are usually temporary structures, some are used for long periods of time...
s hastily constructed by the Iraqis in response to the anti-bridge strikes, in approximately four weeks.
In the Gulf War, only 9 percent of the tonnage expended on Iraqi forces by American airmen were precision munitions. Not quite half of this percentage—4.3 percent—consisted of laser-guided bombs, credited with causing approximately 75 percent of the serious damage inflicted upon Iraqi strategic and operational targets. The remaining precision munitions consisted of specialized air-to-surface missiles such as the Maverick
AGM-65 Maverick
The AGM-65 Maverick is an air-to-ground tactical missile designed for close-air support. It is effective against a wide range of tactical targets, including armor, air defenses, ships, ground transportation and fuel storage facilities....
and the Hellfire
AGM-114 Hellfire
The AGM-114 Hellfire is an air-to-surface missile developed primarily for anti-armor use. It has multi-mission, multi-target precision-strike capability, and can be launched from multiple air, sea, and ground platforms. The Hellfire missile is the primary 100 lb-class air-to-ground precision...
, as well as cruise missiles, anti-radar missile
Missile
Though a missile may be any thrown or launched object, it colloquially almost always refers to a self-propelled guided weapon system.-Etymology:The word missile comes from the Latin verb mittere, meaning "to send"...
s, and assorted small numbers of special weapons. It was, overall, the laser-guided bomb that dominated both the battlefield, the counter-air campaign against Iraqi airfields, strikes against command and control and leadership targets, and the anti-bridge and rail campaign. As the Gulf War Air Power Survey concluded,
"Against point targets, laser-guided bombs offered distinct advantages over "dumb" bombs. The most obvious was that the guided bombs could correct for ballistic and release errors in flight. Explosive loads could also be more accurately tailored for the target, since the planner could assume most bombs would strike in the place and manner expected. Unlike 'dumb' bombs, LGB's released from medium to high altitude were highly accurate. . . . Desert Storm reconfirmed that LGB's possessed a near single-bomb target-destruction capability, an unprecedented if not revolutionary development in aerial arfare."
In particular, the advent of routine around-the-clock laser bombing of fielded enemy forces in the Gulf War constituted a new phase in the history of air warfare. These attacks were not classic close air support, or battlefield air interdiction, but, instead, given the level of accomplishment over time, went far beyond the levels of effectiveness traditionally implied by such terms. Indeed, the vast majority were made in the 39 days prior to the ground operation when the coalition's land forces were, for the most part, waiting for their war to begin. Yet the Iraqi army was, in effect, mortally wounded in this time. These attacks, against Iraq's mechanized formations and artillery, can best be described as a form of strategic attack directed against unengaged but fielded enemy forces, what might be termed DEA: "Degrade Enemy Army." The combination of laser-guided bombs from F-111F
General Dynamics F-111
The General Dynamics F-111 "Aardvark" was a medium-range interdictor and tactical strike aircraft that also filled the roles of strategic bomber, reconnaissance, and electronic warfare in its various versions. Developed in the 1960s by General Dynamics, it first entered service in 1967 with the...
's and F-15E
F-15E Strike Eagle
The McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle is an all-weather multirole fighter, derived from the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle. The F-15E was designed in the 1980s for long-range, high speed interdiction without relying on escort or electronic warfare aircraft. United States Air Force F-15E Strike...
's, together with Maverick missiles using imaging infrared thermal sensors fired by A-10
A-10 Thunderbolt II
The Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II is an American single-seat, twin-engine, straight-wing jet aircraft developed by Fairchild-Republic in the early 1970s. The A-10 was designed for a United States Air Force requirement to provide close air support for ground forces by attacking tanks,...
's and F-16
F-16 Fighting Falcon
The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is a multirole jet fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics for the United States Air Force . Designed as an air superiority day fighter, it evolved into a successful all-weather multirole aircraft. Over 4,400 aircraft have been built since...
's were devastating, as were laser-guided bombs from British Tornadoes and Buccaneers, and AS-30L laser-guided missiles fired from French Air Force
French Air Force
The French Air Force , literally Army of the Air) is the air force of the French Armed Forces. It was formed in 1909 as the Service Aéronautique, a service arm of the French Army, then was made an independent military arm in 1933...
Jaguars. Particularly deadly were F-111F night "tank plinking" strikes using 500 lb (226.8 kg). GBU-12 laser-guided bombs. On February 9, for example, in one night of concentrated air attacks, forty F-111F's destroyed over 100 armored vehicles. Overall, the small 66-plane F-111F force was credited with 1,500 kills of Iraqi tanks and other mechanized vehicles. Air attacks by F-15E's and Marine A-6E's
A-6 Intruder
The Grumman A-6 Intruder was an American, twin jet-engine, mid-wing attack aircraft built by Grumman Aerospace. In service with the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps between 1963 and 1997, the Intruder was designed as an all-weather medium attack aircraft to replace the piston-engined A-1 Skyraider...
in the easternmost section of the theater averaged over thirty artillery pieces or armored vehicles destroyed per night.
Once attack helicopter
Helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by one or more engine-driven rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forwards, backwards, and laterally...
s attached to surface forces entered battle, they demonstrated that such results were not limited to fixed-wing attackers. At sea, Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
and U.S. Navy helicopters destroyed numerous Iraqi small boats and military craft; fourteen of fifteen British Aerospace Sea Skua antishipping missiles launched from Westland Lynx helicopters hit their targets, a hit rate of over 93 percent. French, British, and American gunships destroyed numerous Iraqi mechanized vehicles. McDonnell AH-64A Apache
AH-64 Apache
The Boeing AH-64 Apache is a four-blade, twin-engine attack helicopter with a tailwheel-type landing gear arrangement, and a tandem cockpit for a two-man crew. The Apache was developed as Model 77 by Hughes Helicopters for the United States Army's Advanced Attack Helicopter program to replace the...
crews of one U.S. Army aviation brigade destroyed approximately fifty Iraqi tanks in a single encounter. Another Apache unit scored 102 hits for the expenditure of 107 Hellfire missiles, a hit rate of better than 95 percent. (Overall, Apache gunship
Gunship
The term "gunship" is used in several contexts, all sharing the general idea of a light craft armed with heavy guns.-In Navy:In the Navy, the term originally appeared in the mid-19th century as a less-common synonym for gunboat.-In military aviation:...
s destroyed nearly 950 Iraqi tanks, personnel carriers, and miscellaneous vehicles).
The reaction of Iraqi forces to direct precision air attacks indicated that the traditional powerful psychological impact of air attack had, at last, been matched by the equally powerful impact of actual destruction. What can be identified can be targeted so precisely that unnecessary casualties are not inflicted upon an opponent. In short, war, the great waster of human life, is now significantly more humane. Increasingly, war is more about destroying or incapacitating things as opposed to people. It is now about pursuing an effects-based strategy, rather than an annihilation-based strategy, a strategy that one can control an opponent without having to destroy him. Further, in the precision engagement era, what has changed most dramatically has been the time scale and level of effort required to achieve decisive effects over an opponent. Today, planners are far less concerned about the number of sorties required to destroy a target; rather, they emphasize the number of targets destroyed per sortie as the metric that must be considered.
Reaffirmation of the Gulf experience
Nor was the Gulf War an isolated example. From August 30 through September 14, 1995, for the first time in its history, NATO forces engaged in combatCombat
Combat, or fighting, is a purposeful violent conflict meant to establish dominance over the opposition, or to terminate the opposition forever, or drive the opposition away from a location where it is not wanted or needed....
operations, against Bosnian
Bosnians
Bosnians are people who reside in, or come from, Bosnia and Herzegovina. By the modern state definition a Bosnian can be anyone who holds citizenship of the state. This includes, but is not limited to, members of the constituent ethnic groups of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Bosniaks, Bosnian Serbs and...
Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
n forces in the former Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
. A total of 293 aircraft based at fifteen European locations and operating from three aircraft carrier
Aircraft carrier
An aircraft carrier is a warship designed with a primary mission of deploying and recovering aircraft, acting as a seagoing airbase. Aircraft carriers thus allow a naval force to project air power worldwide without having to depend on local bases for staging aircraft operations...
s flew 3,515 sorties in Operation Deliberate Force, to deter Serbian aggression. Somewhat less than 700 of these sorties targeted command and control, supporting lines of communication, direct and essential targets, fielded forces, and integrated air defenses. A total of 67 percent of all such targets engaged were destroyed; 14 percent experienced moderate to severe damage, 16 percent light damage, and only 3 percent were judged to have experienced no damage.
In contrast to the Gulf War, the vast majority of NATO munitions employed in the Bosnian conflict were precision ones: in fact, over 98 percent of those used by American forces. American forces employed a total of 622 precision munitions, consisting of 567 laser-guided bombs, 42 electro-optical or infrared-guided weapons, and 13 Tomahawk
BGM-109 Tomahawk
The Tomahawk is a long-range, all-weather, subsonic cruise missile. Introduced by General Dynamics in the 1970s, it was designed as a medium- to long-range, low-altitude missile that could be launched from a surface platform. It has been improved several times and, by way of corporate divestitures...
Land Attack cruise missile
Cruise missile
A cruise missile is a guided missile that carries an explosive payload and is propelled, usually by a jet engine, towards a land-based or sea-based target. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhead over long distances with high accuracy...
s. American airmen dropped only 12 "dumb" bombs. Precision weaponry accounted for 28 percent of NATO munitions dropped by non-US attackers. Sorties by Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, and British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
strike aircraft dropped 86 laser-guided bombs, and French, Italian, Dutch, and United Kingdom attackers dropped 306 "dumb" bombs. Overall, combining both the American and non-American experience in Bosnia, there were 708 precision weapons employed by NATO forces, and 318 non-precision ones; thus precision weaponry accounted for 69 percent of the total employed in the NATO air campaign. Combined statistics of American and NATO experience indicate that the average number of precision weapons per designated mean point of impact (DMPI) destroyed was 2.8. In contrast, the average number of "dumb" general purpose bombs per DMPI destroyed was 6.6. The average number of attack sorties per DMPI destroyed was 1.5.
As a result of NATO's first sustained air strike operations, all military and political objectives were attained: safe areas were no longer under attack or threatened, heavy weapons had been removed from designated areas, and Sarajevo
Sarajevo
Sarajevo |Bosnia]], surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans....
's airport could once again open, as could road access to the city. More importantly, the path to a peace agreement had been secured. In total, for an overall expenditure of approximately 64 weapons per day—69 percent (44) of which were precision weapons—NATO forces achieved their military and political objectives. The leverage that this weaponry gave over Balkan aggressors and the recognition of what precision air attack means to decision-makers in the modern world was enunciated by former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke
Richard Holbrooke
Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke was an American diplomat, magazine editor, author, professor, Peace Corps official, and investment banker....
after the conclusion of the campaign and the settlement of the Dayton Peace Accords:
"One of the great things that people should have learned from this is that there are times when air power--not backed up by ground troops--can make a difference."
The key, of course, is in the targeting
Targeting (warfare)
Targeting is the process used to select objects or installations to be attacked, taken, or destroyed in warfare.Technologically advanced countries can generally select their targets in such a way as to minimize collateral damage and civilian casualties. This can fall by the wayside, however, during...
, for air power is like other forms of military power projection in one important regard: namely, to achieve best effect, it must be used overwhelmingly, as part of a well-thought-out strategy, and not merely as a tool of diplomatic signal-sending. Put another way, if the foe is targeted effectively, the foe will get the message. This has been, of course, one of the great concerns we have seen in the current air campaign over Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
and Kosovo
Kosovo
Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...
, namely whether the air effort being expended is consistent with what prudent use of air power teaches us from the past.
Holbrooke's statement hints at one of the major effects of precision, namely that the traditional notion of massing a large ground force to confront an opponent, particularly on a "field of battle" is now rendered archaic. To a degree, throughout military history, the span of influence of ground forces was always spreading out the battle area at the expense of "mass." As the zone of lethality an individual soldier could command increased, the spacing between soldiers expanded as well. But the precision attacker overcomes the expansion of the linear battlefield by exercising the ability to undertake individual targeting at ranges far in excess of even the most powerful artillery. Thus airplanes, "smart" ballistic missile
Ballistic missile
A ballistic missile is a missile that follows a sub-orbital ballistic flightpath with the objective of delivering one or more warheads to a predetermined target. The missile is only guided during the relatively brief initial powered phase of flight and its course is subsequently governed by the...
s, or cruise missiles, launched hundreds of miles away from a front-line, can then pass beyond that front-line for a distance of hundreds of miles more before targeting some key enemy facility or capability that directly influences the success of enemy operations at the front itself. This is true flexibility, of a sort again unknown to previous military eras. Further, it speaks to a changing paradigm in warfare: from the classic infantry-armor paradigm to a paradigm emphasizing remote fires: air and artillery.
Precision attack versus light infantry
As hinted by the Balkan experience, both in 1995 and in 1999, the advantages of precision attack are not limited to what might be termed "traditional" encounters between massive deployed forces possessing large and vulnerable weapons such as ships, tanks, and vehicles. Indeed, recent examinations of air power applications against light infantryLight infantry
Traditionally light infantry were soldiers whose job was to provide a skirmishing screen ahead of the main body of infantry, harassing and delaying the enemy advance. Light infantry was distinct from medium, heavy or line infantry. Heavy infantry were dedicated primarily to fighting in tight...
in typical Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
crisis conditions indicate that precision offers very high leverage whether one is dealing with a mechanized force, a guerrilla-type army in a wooded or jungle environment, or, even, an individual urban sniper
Sniper
A sniper is a marksman who shoots targets from concealed positions or distances exceeding the capabilities of regular personnel. Snipers typically have specialized training and distinct high-precision rifles....
à la Sarajevo. The combination of new and enhanced sensor
Sensor
A sensor is a device that measures a physical quantity and converts it into a signal which can be read by an observer or by an instrument. For example, a mercury-in-glass thermometer converts the measured temperature into expansion and contraction of a liquid which can be read on a calibrated...
technology, coupled with information exchange between targeting systems and strike aircraft, helicopters, or smart missiles, can defeat threats that, in previous times, were considered too difficult to thwart without greatly widening a war effort.
Even light infantry forces generate by their operations and equipment a variety of detectable signatures—visual, chemical, infrared, electromagnetic, radar, and acoustic—that render them vulnerable to a range of active radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
sensor systems (such as synthetic aperture, moving target indicator, and foliage penetrating radars), and passive air (and air-deployed ground-based) sensors (such as low light level TV, thermal imagers, multispectral analyzers, engine electrical ignition, and magnetic field detectors). These signatures betray the location and, indeed, strength of enemy forces, enabling targeting systems to then direct air attacks against them.
The capabilities of new detection systems are remarkable by the standards of previous conflict. One countersniper ballistic analyzer, the Lifeguard sniper location system developed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , just outside Livermore, California, is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center founded by the University of California in 1952...
, detects a sniper's bullet after the round has been fired, analyzes its flight path, and then establishes the bullet track back to its point of origin, all virtually instantaneously, and with an accuracy of within 2 foot (0.6096 m) of where the sniper is actually located. If multiple analyzers are present, this track can be refined to within one inch. With this capability, even a sniper operating in the midst of a crowded urban environment is not immune to reprisal—for example, a helicopter gunship firing its cannon on precise coordinates, or a strike aircraft releasing a laser-guided soft and lightweight sticky foam bomb that could burst in a room and kill or disable a sniper without damaging or endangering the surrounding structure or building inhabitants.
Precision weaponry and the revolution in military affairs
In recent years, much has been made about the so-called "Revolution in Military Affairs," and whether, or not, an "RMA," in fact, really is underway. If one truly considers the implications of precision attack, it is clear that precision weapons, when coupled to the other great revolutions of this aerospace century, have transformed warfare, and, as a result, the question is not really one of "Does an RMA exist?" but, rather, "When did it begin, and what are its implications?" Tied to this, of course, are equally-surprisingly persistent questions about the use and value of air power, now more accurately considered as aerospace power. If nothing else, given the record of precision air power application, aerospace power advocates should not still have to spend as much time as they do arguing the merits of three-dimensional war and the value of precision attack to it. Modern joint service aerospace forces offer the most responsive, flexible, lethal, and devastating form of power projection across the spectrum of conflict, employing a range of aerospace weaponry such as maritime patrol aircraft, attack and troop-lift helicopters, land-based long-range aircraft, and battlefield rocket artillery systems. Service-specific aerospace power can often be formidable and, as such, over not quite the last ninety years, has transformed conflict from two dimensional to three dimensional, and has changed the critical focus of conflict from that of seizing and holding to one of halting and controlling.In this regard, it is worth quickly reviewing a few salient points from the military history of this century. Within roughly a decade of the first flight of an airplane, aircraft were having an occasionally decisive effect on the battlefield. Within four decades, a nation—Great Britain—secured its national survival through air warfare. By the midst of the Second World War, three-dimensional attack (from above and below the surface) had become the primary means of sinking both vessels at sea and destroying the combat capability of armies on land. In fact, for the United States, this trend of inflicting losses and material destruction primarily through air attack continued into the postwar years for Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, Bosnia, and other, lesser, contingencies. In particular, air attack directed against land forces has been especially powerful in blunting and destroying opponents on the offensive, whether in older experience—such as confronting Rommel in the Western Desert, or Nazi armored forces trying to split the Normandy invasion at Mortain, or at the Bulge (where German commanders credited Allied fighter attacks on fuel trucks and supplies as being the decisive factor in halting their drive), in the opening and closing stages of the Korean War, and confronting the 1972 North Vietnamese Spring Invasion—or, more recently, in destroying the Khafji offensive of Saddam Hussein in 1991. NATO's reliance upon air power in the present Balkan crisis should not be surprising, for, from the very earliest days, the NATO alliance saw air power as the linchpin of Western military strength, and the necessary off-set to the Warsaw Pact's huge military forces.
Given its historical underpinnings, we should not be surprised that the revolution in warfare that has been brought about both by the confluence of the aerospace and the electronic revolutions, and by the off-shoot of both—the precision guided munition—is one that has been a long-time coming, back to the Second World War, back, even, to the experimenters of the First World War who attempted, however crudely, to develop "smart" weapons to launch from airships and other craft. Used almost experimentally until the latter stages of the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, the precision weapon since that time has increasingly come to first influence, then dominate, and now perhaps to render superfluous, the traditional notion of a linear battlefield.