The Tools of War

BOEING
The F-15E is the latest U.S. warplane to carry the JDAMs

If some U.S. officials are right, Iraqi engineers and scientists are in a race with time. Deep underground in the Salman Pak, Samarra and Tuwaitha complexes near Baghdad, they are thought to be developing biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and perfecting ways to deliver them. If so, they are not the only ones racing. Inside the headquarters of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency outside Washington, Pentagon mapmakers are reviewing satellite imagery pouring in from Iraq every day. They are updating the Digital Point Positioning Database, made up of computerized maps showing the coordinates of Saddam Hussein's key weapons facilities, command posts and air-defense sites. Halfway across the country, just outside St. Louis, Mo., a Boeing factory has gone to two shifts a day building a revolutionary weapon geared for those targets. Workers are assembling computer-steered bomb tails that, once loaded with those Pentagon-supplied coordinates, harness gravity and wind to turn "dumb" bombs into weapons of amazing and amazingly cheap precision.

It was the when and the why of going to war with Iraq that Congress debated last week, before both houses overwhelmingly approved a resolution authorizing force. Now comes the how. If war erupts, the work of the weaponsmakers in both countries may be more central to the outcome than in any previous conflict. In a battle between the two armed forces, the U.S. is plainly equipped to prevail. But to achieve its aim of pacifying Iraq once the fighting is done, America must triumph over Baghdad without thrashing the country which is why hitting the right targets and little else is so important. For Iraq, given the depleted state of its military, the odds can be shifted in its favor only one way by deploying weapons of mass destruction against invading U.S. troops in the hope of slaughtering thousands of them.

The U.S. faced this threat before, in 1991, when it battled Iraqi forces to expel Iraq from Kuwait; that time Baghdad kept its nastiest weapons sheathed. But the Iraqis have never confronted what the U.S. military has in store for them should war come again. The last conflict introduced the world to the "smart" bomb, when Gulf War commanders narrated videotapes showing precision-guided munitions taking out discrete buildings they had targeted. Today's smart bombs make the old ones look dim-witted. What's more, newer smart bombs are far cheaper and easier to use, so there would be a lot more of them raining down on Iraqi targets. In 1991's Desert Storm, precision-guided munitions accounted for 7% of the bombs used. That share jumped to 30% in 1999's Kosovo conflict and to 60% in Afghanistan last year. Pentagon officials say they would aim for 100% in the opening days of any war with Iraq.

The improvement in weaponry traces back to what did not go right the last time U.S. warplanes attacked Iraq. In 1991 clouds and smoke coming from Kuwaiti oil fields set ablaze by Saddam's troops forced many U.S. warplanes to return to their bases without dropping their ordnance because their laser-guidance systems could not see through the foul air. In a handwritten note he fired off to his weapons designers shortly after that conflict, Air Force Chief of Staff General Merrill McPeak said, "We need to lay down a requirement for an all-WX PGM"an all-weather precision-guided munition.

McPeak's notion was to produce a smart bomb that could be wedded to the constantly orbiting global-positioning-system (GPS) satellites so that bad visibility would not hamper targeting. His idea became a reality in 1998, when the Pentagon bought its first JDAM joint direct-attack munition from Boeing. By scrapping complicated procurement rules for this project, the Pentagon was able to keep the price of a JDAM at $27,000, pocket change compared with the $1 million price tag on a single cruise missile like the ones used in the Gulf War. JDAM tail kits are fastened onto standard dumb bombs of varying sizes. The bomb always knows where it is, based on information it gets from the plane or, after it is dropped, from GPS. Its aluminum fins steer it to the target, which is logged into the bomb's computer.

The JDAM is designed to land within 43 feet of its target 50% of the time, but an Air Force general who helped run the war in Afghanistan boasts that the system performed even better there. Bombs fell within 10 ft. of their target "nearly 100% of the time," he says. Even if an enemy jams the weak GPS signal, the JDAM remains relatively accurate, usually landing within 100 ft. of its target. Accuracy is critical because a top priority in a new war against Iraq would be to cause as few civilian casualties as possible; accidents would be well covered by the media and could incite more anti-Americanism in the Arab world.

JDAMs help protect pilots too. Unlike laser-guided bombs, which are guided to their target from planes flying at about 15,000 ft., JDAMs can be dropped from 35,000 ft., beyond the reach of much enemy fire. They can be unloaded 15 miles from their target, offering pilots additional protection. Plus, the bomb kits are user friendly. "It takes me about an hour's work to launch a cruise missile but only 10 minutes to launch a JDAM," says Lieut. Colonel James Dunn, a B-52 bombardier at Louisiana's Barksdale Air Force Base who lobbed the bombs in Afghanistan.