Over the past decade, U.S. forces have increasingly relied on precision-guided weapons in armed conflicts. Whereas only about 10 percent of the weapons used in Operation Desert Storm were so-called "smart bombs," a DOD report estimated in April that in Afghanistan about 60 percent of the bombs dropped were precision-guided weapons, many using sophisticated satellite guidance for higher accuracy. According to the DOD report, the U.S. air campaign in Afghanistan achieved a 75 to 85 percent success rate. By comparison, in the 1991 Gulf War and the 1999 Kosovo conflict less than half such weapons hit their targets. The increased accuracy has been attributed to the increased use of smart bombs, greatly facilitated in Afghanistan by the use of Special Forces spotters on the ground.

There are several reasons for the increased use of smart bombs: most simply, there are more precision-guided weapons in today's arsenal than in the early 1990s; but perhaps more importantly, modern warfare requires priority attention to ensuring fewer civilian casualties in operations often taking place in cities or populated areas rather than on the open battlefields of yesterday. However, as the number of friendly fire incidents in Afghanistan shows, smart bombs do not eradicate collateral damage. Moreover, such munitions can be less effective against underground or mobile targets, as demonstrated during Operation Anaconda.

 

By Mark Burgess CDI Research Analyst mburgess@cdi.org and Rear Adm. Stephen H. Baker CDI Senior Advisor sbaker@cdi.org

BACK TO THE TOP    TERRORISM PROJECT HOME    LINKS    CDI HOME