The original concept was created by engineer Norman Kay while tinkering with televisions as a hobby. It was a family of large glide bombs which could automatically track targets using contrast differences in the video feed. The first successful electro optical guided munition was the AGM-62 Walleye during the Vietnam war. While it entered production in 1945, it was never employed operationally. National Defense Research Committee developed the VB-6 Felix, which used infrared to home on ships.
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Such weapons were used increasingly by the USAF in the last few years of the Vietnam War because the political climate was increasingly intolerant of civilian casualties, and because it was possible to strike difficult targets (such as bridges) effectively with a single mission the Thanh Hoa Bridge, for instance, was attacked repeatedly with iron bombs, to no effect, only to be dropped in one mission with PGMs.Īlthough not as popular as the newer JDAM and JSOW weapons, or even the older laser-guided bomb systems, weapons like the AGM-62 Walleye TV guided bomb are still being used, in conjunction with the AAW-144 Data Link Pod, on US Navy F/A-18 Hornets. An operator in this aircraft then transmitted control signals to steerable fins fitted to the bomb. The camera bombs transmitted a "bomb's eye view" of the target back to a controlling aircraft. They were equipped with television cameras and flare sights, by which the bomb would be steered until the flare superimposed the target. In the 1960s, the electro-optical bomb (or camera bomb) was reintroduced. The United States Army Air Forces used similar techniques with Operation Aphrodite, but had few successes the German Mistel (Mistletoe) " parasite aircraft" was no more effective, guided by the human pilot flying the single-engined fighter mounted above the unmanned, explosive-laden twin engined "flying bomb" below it, released in the Mistel's attack dive from the fighter. Prior to the war, the British experimented with radio-controlled remotely guided planes laden with explosive, such as Larynx. Japanese PGMs-with the exception of the anti-ship air-launched, rocket-powered, human-piloted Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka, "Kamikaze" flying bomb did not see combat in World War II. tested the rocket-propelled Gargoyle, which never entered service. The closest Allied equivalents, both unpowered designs, were the 1,000 lb (450 kg) VB-1 AZON (from "AZimuth ONly" control), used in both Europe and the CBI theater, and the US Navy's Bat, primarily used in the Pacific Theater of World War II - the Navy's Bat was more advanced than either German PGM ordnance design or the USAAF's VB-1 AZON, in that it had its own on board, autonomous radar seeker system to direct it to a target. The Germans were first to introduce PGMs in combat, with KG 100 deploying the 3,100 lb (1,400 kg) MCLOS-guidance Fritz X armored glide bomb, guided by the Kehl-Straßburg radio guidance system, to successfully attack the Italian battleship Roma in 1943, and the similarly Kehl-Straßburg MCLOS-guided Henschel Hs 293 rocket-boosted glide bomb (also in use since 1943, but only against lightly armored or unarmored ship targets). The advent of precision-guided munitions resulted in the renaming of older bombs " unguided bombs", "dumb bombs", or "iron bombs". Thus, even if some guided bombs miss, fewer air crews are put at risk and the harm to civilians and the amount of collateral damage may be reduced. īecause the damage effects of explosive weapons decrease with distance due to an inverse cube law, even modest improvements in accuracy (hence reduction in miss distance) enable a target to be attacked with fewer or smaller bombs. Despite guided weapons generally being used on more difficult targets, they were still 35 times more likely to destroy their targets per weapon dropped. During the First Gulf War guided munitions accounted for only 9% of weapons fired, but accounted for 75% of all successful hits. Afghan Air Force GBU-58 guided bomb strikes a Taliban compound in Farah Province, AfghanistanĪ precision-guided munition ( PGM, smart weapon, smart munition, smart bomb) is a guided munition intended to precisely hit a specific target, to minimize collateral damage and increase lethality against intended targets.
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