As a former (albeit briefly due to the late 80's draw-down) 'ground pounder' it amazes me as to what is now possible compared to ancient history - say 1991. Through plentiful air-support with long loiter times, US Army tactical commanders can bring down a horrendous amount of firepower almost instantaneously on any enemy.

In WWII we (the U.S.) eventually came around to the British belief in (strategic) bombing due to horrendous inaccuracy of U.S. daylight raids over Germany. RAF SOP was - don't burn the factory down - burn the city down and take the factory with it - it's easier. Also unfortunately somewhat more barbaric, but the Nazi's - or the Japanese for that matter - didn't have nearly as effective PR machine as the Iraqi's do now.

As far as tactical air support went, WWII and Korea were not overtly different - Find target, drop munition of choice in its area, and hopefully hit it. Quite bit was not even close.

By the end of Vietnam, the dawn of laser guided PGM's (radio guided missiles and even drone aircraft had been tried with limited effectiveness) had improved guidance systems by many factors. Even though the laser (and to a much more minor extent active systems like IR and radar guided - as well as HARM systems - which lock on to various active electrical emmissions - like radars) were the wonder weapons of Gulf War that was shown on TV, far and away most weaponry dropped during the first Gulf War were still of the old fashioned 'iron bomb' category.

Although accuracy was again much, much better in Gulf War I (due to very good computerized aiming systems), there was a still a greater revolution coming.

In fact, the first Gulf War allowed U.S. conventional stocks left over from the Vietnam War to be expended. Laser PGM's are very expensive and somewhat difficult to guide since most systems are not of the 'fire and forget' variety, an aircraft has to loiter in the area to 'designate' the target until the bomb hits. This time interval can be very dangerous to the designator aircraft.

What has really changed in the last 12 years (and which is really amazing) is the preponderance of cheap GPS systems that are basically just a bomb with a GPS seeker that guides itself, from usually a very high altitude (longer glide path to target=more range) to a pre-programmed 5'x 5' spot on the earth (military GPS is more accurate - on purpose - than civilian systems, even though it uses the same satelites). Fog, rain, smoke have no effect on the munition. The weapons are cheap, easy to deliver, and extremely accurate.

Errors (baring VERY RARE mechanical failure of some type) are now strctly on the part of bad intelligence/G-2 (aka the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade).

In fact, there have been more than a few complaints coming from pilots grumbling that their job has become little more than 'bomb truck' drivers dropping weapons from very long range (and little threat) and going home. The exciting (and life-threatening) jinking 'ack-ack' days are over.

Also, don't worry about Uncle Sadaam causing any damage to a 744 at FL310. Unless someone schedules a commercial flight across Iraq in the first 6 hours of the campaign (the mid/high altitude SAM systems - and radars - that Iraq has that could reach even a nice easy commercial target at usual cruising level will be the first to go bye-bye) there is nothing to worry about.

Final approach (basically crossing the fence at the airport) is the time to worry - a man-portable SAM system would be quite effective against a commercial airliner. But as the Nairobi failed attack against the El Al flight just showed, even these attacks are not easy to execute.

[This message has been edited by CoMooter (edited 03-17-2003).]