Are The Smart Bombs Really Smarter Now?

By Mark Thompson/Washington

Even the Air Force acknowledges that the "smart" bombs that wowed the world during 1991's Persian Gulf War did not quite live up to their publicity. They often could not be used in bad weather or could not be fired from far away, or required pilots to guide them to their targets, exposing crews to hostile fire. However, the grainy but riveting videos of U.S. bombs and missiles whistling down enemy smokestacks heralded a new way of waging war from the skies. New weapons with ever increasing accuracy lead the Pentagon to be confident that few will stray, thus limiting what military euphemists refer to as "collateral damage"--innocent, but dead, civilians.

Barely 9% of the bombs dropped during the Gulf War were smart bombs, and the Pentagon never released videos of B-52s carpet-bombing Iraqi troops or of smart bombs that missed. It was in September 1995 that U.S. smart weapons really triumphed. In a three-week campaign that was 70% smart bombs, the U.S. military drove the Bosnian Serbs to the Dayton, Ohio, negotiating table, ending the three-year Balkan war. The Air Force claims that it hit 97% of its targets and damaged or destroyed 80% of those it struck. It is that success the Pentagon will try to emulate in any strikes against Iraq.

This time, more U.S. weapons have a "fire-and-forget" capability that uses Global Positioning System satellites to guide them to their targets. That lets U.S. pilots head for home as soon as they release their payloads. A more sensitive fuse on some weapons--using an accelerometer that measures the weapon's speed--actually "counts" floors and explodes only after it has reached the pre-selected level.

But such precision highlights a problem: the effectiveness of those weapons is directly proportional to the quality of the intelligence used in selecting their targets. For many sites on the Pentagon's growing list of Iraqi targets, U.S. knowledge is scant. If war does come to Iraq soon, it is a good bet that lots of very expensive U.S. smart bombs are going to be blowing up lots of recently vacated Iraqi buildings.

--By Mark Thompson/Washington