Re: Smart Bombs (was Re: HISTORY: F111)

Michael Lorrey (retroman@tpk.net)
Mon, 21 Jul 1997 18:49:18 -0400


Mark Grant wrote:
>
> On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, Michael Lorrey wrote:
>
> > People say that 25% accuracy is a crappy result. BS. Considering that
> > infantry shoots an average of 9000 rounds to kill one enemy soldier,
> > artillery tosses an average of 50 rounds to nail one tank, etc....a
> > 25-50% success rate is highly surgical by military standards.
>
> Actually it wasn't the absolute success rate they were quoting, but that
> laser-guided bombs were no more effective than old unguided bombs and far
> more expensive. They weren't impressed with cruise missiles, either,
> though the success rate was classified out. I think it was a GAO report.
>
> I guess this didn't make any US newspapers? It merited a quarter-page or
> so in all the 'quality' newspapers in the UK. Interesting example of media
> bias.
>

What is meant by "effectiveness"? How is that any different than
accuracy, and how would anything besides accuracy matter, besides
possibly penetration.

The anti- weapons systems reports that came out after the Gulf War were
issued by the congresisonal budget office, then under the control of
democrats. The CBO is notorious for twisting and cherry picking data to
fit foregone conclusions, to the benefit of the party in the majority in
congress. Due to this, their reports are not considered by anybody but
the mainstream US media to be worth a hoot, and the media only pays
attention to them when the democrats are in charge there. Granted the
effectiveness of many weapons systems did not, in the final anlysis,
meet up to initial projections, but they also turned out to be nowhere
near as bad as the CBO would have you beleive. This was all covered in
the media, and Aviation Week did a bit of indepth on the whole issue,
exposing the CBO figures as hopelessly inaccurate as the military's
initial projections were in the other direction

As socialist as the British press is, I imagine that they prefer CBO
data to the truth any day when reporting on US politics. I guess they
still are perturbed by one of our F-111's Paveway bombs hitting the
French Embassy in the raid on Tripoli, after the French denied us
airspace for a direct route. They'd better hope those bombs get more
accurate, you never know when a negative piece in the Times will result
in the misrelease of a couple hundred kilos over a certain office in
London.... ;)

-- 
TANSTAAFL!!!
			Michael Lorrey
------------------------------------------------------------
mailto:retroman@tpk.net		Inventor of the Lorrey Drive
Agent Lorrey@ThePentagon.com
Silo_1013@ThePentagon.com	http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/

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