September 24, 2007:
Recently,
especially in the last decade, the appearance of so many precision weapons has
changed tactics on the ground. This proliferation of precision has also changed
the way smart bombs are designed. With
the ability to put a weapon within a meter of the aiming point (using laser
guidance) or 5-10 meters (using GPS), smaller is now better, at least in urban
areas where there are a lot of civilians about, troops have changed the way
they fight. There is more movement in urban warfare because of all this
precision firepower, and fewer friendly fire casualties from bombs and
artillery. But it's not just the air force and their smart bombs that have
brought this on. The army had precision missiles on the ground long before JDAM
came along. Thus, over the last five years, there has been a competition
between the army and air force to develop smaller, cheaper and more precise,
missiles and bombs.
A decade ago, there were
several precision weapons to choose from, but all were very expensive.
Basically, if you add high precision to a bomb or missile, you increase its
cost by $25-50,000. One of the first, widely successful precision weapons to
show up was the fifty pound TOW anti-tank missile. It has a 13 pound warhead,
and, when wars broke out, was mainly
used t for taking out rooms in buildings where enemy gunmen were hiding. It was
a TOW that got Saddam Husseins two sons four years ago. Every mech infantry
unit has plenty of TOW missiles, and very few enemy tanks to use them on.
Although the air force had
smart (GPS guided) bombs in 2001, these came in only two sizes; half ton and
one ton. This was too much blast for urban fighting. The need for less
firepower compelled the air force to quickly modify its GPS guidance kit to fit
on a 500 pound bomb. But that's still 280 pounds of explosives. The troops
wanted precision, and less bang. In response, the air force (actually, the
navy) developed a 500 pound bomb with all but 30 pounds of the explosives
removed. All these JDAM smart bombs cost
less than $30,000 each. Then there's a completely new smart bomb design, the 250 pound SDB (small diameter bomb). This
weapon has a shape that's more like that of a missile than a bomb (70 inches
long, 190 millimeters in diameter), with the guidance system built in. The
smaller blast from the SDB is still pretty substantial (51 pounds of
explosives). A new SDB design has a Focused Lethality Munition (FLM) warhead,
which reduces the number of metal fragments created when the bomb explodes, and
increases the blast effect. This is meant to reduce casualties to nearby
civilians, but it's still a bigger bang than the low-explosive 500 pound JDAM.
Moreover, the low-explosive JDAM costs about half as much as the SDB. The one
advantage of the SDB is that you can carry more of them, as they are much more
compact than 500 pound bombs.
Since the 1990s, a more
portable ground combat missile, and just as accurate as TOW, came along in the
form of the 26 pound Javelin, with its
nine pound warhead. These two missiles are expensive, with TOW costing $25,000
each, and Javelin $75,000.
For a smaller bang, there's
the AT4 rocket launcher, and its four pound warhead. It's not laser guided, and
you have to be pretty close to use it. But at the normal ranges its used (a
hundred meters or so), it's very accurate, and it's cheap ($2,700). The LAW is
similar, smaller (2.2 pound warhead) and cheaper ($2,000).
Helicopters and UAVs use
Hellfire missiles, which weigh 100 pounds, and have a 20 pound warhead. A
little less than half of a missile warhead is explosives. Hellfire is laser
guided, and good for taking out vehicles full of bad guys. Hellfire costs
$50,000 each. For about the same price you can use the 44 pound Viper Strike,
and its four pound warhead. Even cheaper ($25,000 each), and smaller, are the
new, laser guided 70mm rockets. There weigh 25 pounds and have a six pound
warhead. The Viper Strike is a laser guided glide bomb that basically comes
straight down. The 70mm rocket has a range of about six kilometers.
The army also has 155mm GPS
guided 155mm shells (Excalibur). Each hundred pound shell has about 20 pounds
of explosives. This makes for a bigger bang than Hellfire or Tow, but much less
than smart bombs. There's also a 227mm MLRS GPS rocket. But this carries over
150 pounds of explosives. About half the bang of a 500 pound JDAM. The GPS
guided 155mm shell and MLRS rocket each cost over $50,000 each. The big advantage of these GPS artillery
munitions is that they are available to the troops 24/7, and the need for fewer
rounds per mission means there are fewer problems with running out, or low, on
supplies.
Price is not really a factor
when it comes to these weapons. The whole point of smart (much more accurate)
munitions is to reduce the number of explosions, and to only blow up what needs
to be destroyed. The proliferation of rockets, smart bombs and missiles, from
those with a pound of explosives (LAW) to 500 pound bombs (with 280 pounds),
gives troops a lot of flexibility on the battlefield. This makes American
troops much more lethal, and greatly reduces friendly, and civilian,
casualties.