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Unlike the earlier, laser guided, smart bombs, JDAM could ignore weather and did not
need someone on the ground, or in the air, pointing a laser at the target (to provide
reflected laser light that the bomb’s guidance system homed in on.)
With JDAM, the
bomber merely had to be close enough to the target (meaning within about 40 kilometers)
for the bomb to be dropped. GPS simply went to a specific location and detonated. No
laser needed. Bad weather and dark of night were not a problem. At
the same time, the
troops on the ground had better GPS, radio and laser range-finder equipment. With the
latest gear, the guy on the ground looked through what appeared to be binoculars. But
these binoculars contained a laser range finder and GPS. Press a button to get the range
and GPS location, press another button to send the GPS data to the bomber overhead. The
bomber pilot pressed a button to transfer the GPS data to a bomb, then released the
bomb.
...
All this meant that the most useful type of bomber, for the ground troops, was one that
could carry lots of bombs, and circle the area for hours, waiting for requests to
release a bomb.
...
And then there is SDB (Small Diameter Bomb), a 250 pound JDAM which is 70 inches long
and 7.5 inches in diameter. With special bomb racks, heavy bombers can carry over 200
SDBs at a time. That means 200 targets can be attacked in one sortie.
...
The B-52 is also the cheapest and most reliable of the heavy bombers. The B-1 and B-2
were designed and built to replace the B-52, but have been outperformed,
in actual
practice, by the older aircraft.
07.04c. Satellite-Guided Bombs and
B-52's.
James Dunnigan tells
us that our fancy new bombers have been made obsolete by even fancier and newer bombs.
We shouldn't be too hard on the Pentagon for pushing the B1 and B2 bombers. This seems
to be an illustration of how military technology can change in ways hard to predict.
What will be interesting to watch now is whether the Pentagon pushes for more B1 and B2
bombers even though they are more expensive and less effective.
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