Weapons of Choice: The Development of Precision Guided Munitions - Softcover

Paul G. Gillespie (author)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0817353534 ISBN 13: 9780817353537

Publisher: The University of Alabama Press, 2023

Synopsis

History and deployment of smart weapons

In the United States, efforts to develop precision guided munitions―PGMs―began during the First World War and resulted in an 'aerial torpedo' by the 1920s. While World War II was dominated by large-scale strategic bombing―essentially throwing out tons of free-falling munitions in the hope they hit something important―both sides in the war worked to develop airborne munitions that could be steered toward a target. However after that war, U.S. national security policy focused on the atomic bomb, hardly a weapon that needed to be directed with accuracy.

The cost of emphasis on atomic weapons was revealed in the general unsuitability of American tactics and weapons deployment systems during the Vietnam War. Lessons learned in that conflict, coupled with rapid technological developments in aerodynamics, lasers, and solid-state electronics, brought air power dramatically closer to the "surgical strike" now seen as crucial to modern warfare. New technology created attractive choices and options for American policymakers as well as field commanders, and events in the Arab-Israeli wars, the U.S. raid on Libya, and most dramatically in the first Gulf War created an ever-increasing demand for the precision weapons.

The prospect of pinpoint delivery of weapons right to the enemy's door by speeding aircraft seems to presage war in which the messy and politically risky deployment of ground troops is unnecessary. The potential of such weapons, and their strategic limitations, made the Gulf War and Iraqi War living theater for assessing what such weapons can and cannot do and have important implications for planning for future warfare.

About this title

About the Author

Paul G. Gillespie is associate professor and Director of Military History at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and coeditor of Forged by Fire: Military History for the Profession of Arms. He has appeared several times as a consultant on the History Channel’s “Modern Marvels” series.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

WEAPONS OF CHOICE

The Development of Precision Guided MunitionsBy PAUL G. GILLESPIE

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Copyright © 2006 Paul G. Gillespie
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-5353-7

Contents

List of Illustrations......................................................ixAcknowledgments............................................................xi1. Introduction............................................................12. The Roots of Precision Guidance.........................................103. Air Power in the Aftermath of World War II..............................394. Making Pinpoint Accuracy a Reality......................................665. Vietnam: Precision Guided Munitions Come of Age.........................966. The Aftermath of Vietnam: Gulf War and Peacekeeping.....................1237. Policy Implications.....................................................1468. Conclusion..............................................................169Notes......................................................................179Bibliography...............................................................205Index......................................................................213

Chapter One

Introduction

Why Precision Guided Munitions?

While there is perhaps some inherent value in examining any technology used by a society, clearly some choices will be more instructive than others. At the dawning of the twenty-first century, the real challenge for anyone hoping to better understand technology lies not in finding a suitable subject but in making sense of the exponentially expanding spectrum of technology that has inundated human existence. Studying an individual technological innovation may provide valuable insight, but only if a particular technology from which broader conclusions might be drawn is selected. Even among military technologies there is no shortage of potential subjects. Limiting oneself to the current U.S. arsenal, the scope and variety of high-tech weaponry is still so wide-ranging that isolating a decisive technology seems akin to selecting the largest tree in the forest. Why, then, have precision guided munitions, or PGMs, been singled out as the subject of this historical study? In order to better demonstrate the relevance of this particular class of weapons, the point of a spear provides a much more apt metaphor than the trees of a forest. If the entire armed forces of a nation are thought of as a spear, logically those personnel and weapons that directly inflict damage and determine outcomes equate to the tip, or point of that spear. At first glance this lethal tip might seem to include much, if not all, of a nation's fielded forces. However, in recent decades an increasingly select few persons and technologies have constituted the spear point.

Born in the earliest days of the twentieth century, one technology has come to dominate the battlefield like no other. The prospect of aerial bombardment began to stir controversy and interest even before the Wright brothers first demonstrated powered flight in 1903, but it was not until the First World War that aircraft emerged as a decisive weapon, capable of producing far-reaching effects. In summarizing the impact of the fledgling German air arm in the opening moves of that conflict, General Paul von Hindenburg flatly stated, "without the airmen, no Tannenberg." During the first half of the twentieth century, the industrialized nations of the world poured vast resources into the development of technologies designed to increase the effectiveness of aerial bombardment, and following World War II, no less a naval enthusiast than Winston Churchill himself was forced to conclude that "for good or ill, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power, and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept subordinate rank." Particularly in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the air force became the indisputable queen of battle, dominating all subsequent twentieth-century conflicts. However, even in the midst of the cold war it was realized that a nuclear-tipped air weapon had severe limitations. While a number of technologies were developed in the next half-century to increase air power's effectiveness, including improved cluster bombs, proximity fuses, penetrating warheads, napalm and other incendiaries, and stealth technology, nothing has revolutionized modern warfare in quite the same way as precision guidance. Hearkening back to Hindenburg's observation, today one might justly assert: "without the PGM, no Kuwait, Bosnia, Afghanistan, or Iraq."

One indication of the relative importance of precision air weapons is the prominence they have attained in modern military forces. Air power encompasses a variety of roles and missions, making it difficult to single out one as decisive. However, it should be kept in mind that the bulk of an air force does not actually fly or fight. For example, in today's U.S. Air Force, only about 3 percent of active duty personnel are pilots-the remaining 97 percent provide flyers with the communications, supply, maintenance, transportation, security, engineering, intelligence, medical, and other support functions that make up the long, nonlethal haft of the spear. Beyond this, most aircraft do not wield bombs or bullets, performing instead such supporting roles as training, airlift, aerial refueling, and reconnaissance. Even critical combat mission areas such as air superiority and the suppression of enemy air defenses, as galling as it must sound to the fighter ace, are actually supporting roles. After all, except in the case of a defensive war, of the sort England fought during the Battle of Britain, air-to-air combat serves chiefly to clear a path for the bomb droppers. So, while the first U.S. Air Force core competency remains Air and Space Superiority, current doctrine admits that this superiority is rarely "an end in itself but is a means to the end of attaining military objectives ... it provides freedom to attack as well as freedom from attack." In contrast, the second Air Force core competency, Precision Engagement, supports the premise that air power provides "the 'scalpel' of joint service operations-the ability to forgo the brute force-on-force tactics of previous wars and apply discriminate force precisely where required." Returning to the previously mentioned spearhead analogy, in the final analysis only those combatants and weapon systems capable of efficiently destroying valued enemy assets on the ground equate to the tip of the spear. As Vince Lombardi might phrase it, when it comes to modern air warfare, "putting bombs on target isn't everything; it's the only thing."

Not long ago, nuclear weapons-primarily bombs and missiles, but also torpedoes, mines, and artillery shells-unquestionably constituted the pointiest end of the spear. Not surprisingly, much has been written analyzing this class of weapons and the strategies and policies that revolved around them. This experience has shown that there is considerable value in writing the history of a dominant weapon-of privileging one particular "winning technology," so to speak-because of what such history reveals about society. This may seem counterintuitive to those in other disciplines, but as one respected historian of technology observed, "the purposes (ethics and values) of our society are built into the very form and fabric of our technology, and the latter does not exist in some neutral sphere divorced from that purpose." During the past four decades, an entire new class of weapons has emerged. In the process, the nuclear weapons that were once the centerpiece of the U.S. arsenal have been relegated to a minor supporting role, and a potent new family of precision guided munitions has emerged as the linchpin of U.S. national security policy. Eventually, American military and political leaders came to rely upon PGMs as the weapon of first choice, believing them capable of solving a wide variety of problems with minimum risk of casualties or escalation. Thus, this treatment is far more than merely another case study-PGMs now represent the sharpest point of the spear, and consequently provide insight into a crucial nexus in the evolution of American national security policy.

Precision Revolution

The development and use of technology for military advantage is hardly unique to the American experience. Technology has shaped warfare in important ways since Herodotus first historicized armed conflict in the fifth century BC. In more recent centuries, such technological innovations as gunpowder, iron ships, and airplanes have played a decisive role in the development of Western warfare. However, following the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, the United States clearly developed a uniquely American way of war-one dependent on a strategy of attrition and the efficient employment of technology to defeat its enemies. This unique way of war, built upon the strength of superior numbers and mass production, was epitomized by Ulysses S. Grant in the final phase of the American Civil War. Later military planners and leaders stuck with Grant's overall strategy but continually looked for ways to reduce the cost in lives, frequently turning to more and better technology as the antidote to decrease the bloodshed intrinsic to the strategy of attrition.

Given America's overall success and eventual superpower status, not surprisingly much historical ink has been spilled analyzing the American way of war. In recent years historians and policy analysts have commenced a lively discourse seeking to explain how new technologies have fundamentally changed the American way of war. In fact, the transformation of warfare during the past two decades has involved much more than a mere shift in American strategy-it has, arguably, amounted to nothing less than a revolution. The term "revolution in military affairs" (RMA) has emerged as a favorite buzzword among academics interested in defense affairs. The years since 1995 have seen a rush by military historians to "examine virtually everything from the strategy of Edward III to Blitzkrieg operations in the light of what we call revolutions in military affairs." While historians debate the complexities and ambiguities of a historical record that is not yet settled, American policymakers appear to have accepted and embraced the current RMA, described as "the use of computers and knowledge management systems to improve battlefield command and control; the development of precision-guided conventional weapons; and the deployment of stealth systems ... which reduced risk for American combatants." While numerous specific technologies have been cited in conjunction with the ongoing changes in warfare, the key elements of the revolution in military affairs have been reducing risks to friendly personnel and reducing diplomatically costly forms of collateral damage to enemies. Both have been accomplished by employing the maturing technologies of precision guided munitions, satellite networks, and other computer-age innovations. Therefore, if RMA has transformed the American way of war, as some have argued, there can be no doubt that precision guided munitions are the sine qua non of this new way of war.

This book examines not only the historical development of an important class of weapons but also the tremendous implications they have had, and will no doubt continue to have, for national security policy. In the process of detailing the historical development of precision weapons, this study addresses several themes relating to their ultimate impact. Some social scientists have argued that precision guided munitions are epiphenomenal-merely the result of the phenomenon of casualty aversion. In contrast, this work attempts to identify a more complex causality, one in which the avoidance of bloodshed is an important, but secondary, factor in the development and wholesale adoption of this crucial technology. In fact, it will be demonstrated that PGMs have proven revolutionary in a number of ways. In addition, because this study contends that PGMs have affected national security policy in significant ways, it will evaluate what they have achieved militarily and whether or not American policymakers have perhaps overestimated what PGMs can accomplish for them strategically and politically. Teasing such themes out of the story will, it is hoped, provide valuable insight into how people perceive and cope with technological change more generally.

Another underlying purpose of this study is to shed light on the sources of technological innovation. Specifically, it investigates which forces, prior discoveries, and contemporary contributions made pinpoint bombing technologically feasible in the mid-1960s but not before. It will be shown that invention is a social process and that it is usually misleading to present it as the achievement of individual genius. A number of key individuals did play prominent roles in the development of PGMs, but the social process that led to the "invention" of the first laser guided bomb consisted partly in the development of earlier forms of guided weapons and partly in the numerous experiments being carried out contemporaneously. As always, novel artifacts clearly arose from antecedent artifacts. What makes the case of PGMs instructive is the source of that novelty. Although many of the necessary antecedents, including laser and computer technologies, were readily available by the early 1960s, it took America's experience in Vietnam to produce a research agenda that purposefully sought technological solutions to specific military problems. Once engineers at Texas Instruments broke the bottlenecks that had limited technological progress, and consequently the effectiveness of air power, the result was a three-tiered revolutionary transformation in munitions guidance, armed conflict, and defense policy.

Overview and Organization

The quest for precision bombardment has occupied the American military for a long time. But, while the far-reaching, even revolutionary, implications of PGMs were recognized and debated almost immediately following their debut in Vietnam, and despite a plethora of published articles on the subject, a comprehensive historical treatment of this important class of weapons has until now gone unwritten. This book's uniqueness lies in its focus on the historical development of guided munitions technology, with particular emphasis on the effect this technology has had on U.S. national security policy. In order to make sense of such a broad topic, however, this study will necessarily be limited in scope. Precision guided munitions have been variously defined as anything from a firepower system whose overall performance provides a high probability of hitting targets with single-round efficiency, to a weapon capable of achieving a specified circular error probable (CEP), the radius of a circle around the target within which 50 percent of firings will fall. However, because not all munitions fitting these broad categories have contributed equally to the revolution in warfare, this book will concentrate on a specific class of weapons: conventional bombs that are interactively guided to terminal impact. Specifically omitted by this definition are ballistic missiles, which once formed the nucleus of U.S. national defense, but which have been rendered largely impotent by political complications associated with their nuclear payloads. Also largely omitted are modern cruise missiles, which, while enjoying the decided advantage of not endangering human operators, differ from the munitions of this study because of their significantly higher cost, lesser accuracy, smaller nonpenetrating warheads, and lack of flexibility in terms of in-flight retargeting or reattack capability. In order to avoid creating here a tedious list of definitions, other terms central to this work will be defined as encountered.

The next chapter will discuss the earliest attempts to develop a precisely guided, aerial delivered bomb. In the United States, this effort received serious attention as early as the First World War and resulted in a marginally successful "aerial torpedo" by the 1920s. In order to put this technological development in context, this chapter will explore the broader impact of technological change on military strategy. By first examining World War I, with its new and evolving technologies, it should be possible to assess just how successful wartime attempts at innovation were. This chapter will also examine the interwar years, that formative period in the development of air power doctrine and attitudes, and the subsequent role of air power in World War II. The role of the air weapon expanded dramatically during this global conflict, bringing about fundamental changes in military strategy as the extreme limits of total war were reached. Notwithstanding the emergence during this period of a doctrine focused on large-scale strategic bombardment, World War II witnessed significant development programs among both Allied and Axis powers aimed at precisely steered airborne munitions. This second chapter will thus demonstrate the persistence and pervasiveness of the early attempts at guided weapons, addressing the underlying question of why precision is so important. At the same time, this chapter will reveal a technology that consistently exceeded the grasp of its would-be inventors, resulting in partial successes at best.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from WEAPONS OF CHOICEby PAUL G. GILLESPIE Copyright © 2006 by Paul G. Gillespie. Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

• Publisher: The University of Alabama Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0817353534
• ISBN 13: 9780817353537
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 232