A new Pandora's Box-like bomb, dubbed the Sensor Fuzed Weapon, may supplant aircraft in some dangerous ground-attack missions. In the Gulf War, coalition pilots hunting Iraqi tanks often flew at low altitudes in the 1970s-era A-10 "Warthog."
When dropped above groups of armored vehicles, the bomb distributes several smaller bomblets that float toward earth on parachutes. Each fires four hockey puck-sized "skeet" that can home in on vehicles using laser seekers, said Steve Butler, engineering director at the Air Armaments Center at Eglin Air Force Base, near Pensacola, Fla.
One bomber toting 30 of the weapons can puncture and blow up vehicles across 12 hectares (30 acres), Butler said.
The Sensor Fuzed bombs were available in the 1999 Kosovo war, but U.S. forces never found an appropriate concentration of Serbian armor on which to test them, said Air Armaments Center spokesman Jake Swinson.
The Air Force might also fire a stealthy new missile dubbed the JASSM, or joint air-to-surface standoff missile, with an accurate range of 320 kilometers (200 miles), Butler said. The satellite-guided JASSM uses an infrared seeker to recognize targets stored in its memory. The missile is being readied for Iraq although the Air Force has yet to complete testing, Butler and others said.