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by Randy L. Kaufman (Author)
For as long as man has walked the planet, the search for greater precision has guided the development of military strategy. The search for greater aerial delivered weapons began significantly sooner than the First Gulf War. Some can effectively argue that the pursuit of precision-guided munitions began as early as World War I, when Charles. F. Kettering developed the first long-range precision weapon, the Kettering Bug. The pursuit of precision became readily evident during the interwar years with the development of the industrial web theory prescribed by the Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS), leading directly to the High Altitude Daylight Precision Bombing (HADPB) practices against Germany during World War II. However, in actual combat conditions, the ability of the Norden bombsight to place weapons inside a "pickle barrel" fell woefully short of the predicted abilities. Nevertheless, significant efforts were initiated to develop true precision capabilities, evidenced by glide-bomb programs instituted by General Henry "Hap" Arnold. By the end of World War II, the predecessors of today's precision-guided weapons took form with the development of electro-optical, infrared, and heat seeking munitions. However, the employment of the atomic bomb, and its incredible destruction capability effectively silenced precision-guided research for over twenty years. Not until Vietnam, when faced with a conventional war where nuclear weapons were eliminated from the United States repertoire, did true precision-guided munitions enter into the United States military weapons arsenal. The weapons developed during Vietnam significantly enhanced the ability of airpower to decisively influence combat operations due to their precision and lethality. Although over 24,000 laser-guided munitions were employed in Vietnam, their true applicability was seen during Operation Desert Storm where eight percent of all aerial weapons were PGMs.
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