The concept of artillery precision strike

Precision strikes are different from the previous indiscriminate bombings. In 1968, the United States planned to bomb a bridge called Thanh Hoa Bridge during the Vietnam War. In order to blow up this bridge, the United States dispatched more than 600 aircraft sorties and dropped more than 5,000 tons of bombs. After several days of indiscriminate bombing, the bridge was still safe and sound and was not blown up. On the contrary, 14 One plane was shot down by anti-aircraft artillery units on both sides of the bridge. In order to avoid the anti-aircraft firepower of the anti-aircraft artillery force, the pilots had to fly very high. After flying high, the bridge was like a string in the eyes of the pilots, which was difficult to blow up, so they dropped a bunch of bombs but did not blow it up. Any bridge or building we see in Yugoslavia now requires only one to two missiles or a small number of guided bombs to destroy it. There is no need to use 600 aircraft sorties and more than 5,000 tons of bombs to destroy a target. This saves ammunition, improves combat effectiveness, speeds up the combat rhythm, increases the power of destruction, and saves a lot of trouble in logistics, transportation and supplies. These are some very important characteristics of modern warfare.

So how accurate is a precision strike? What does it mean to be accurate? Theoretically speaking, weapons with a hit probability of 50% to more than 80% can be called precision-guided weapons. Let me give you an example to illustrate how accurate weapons can be. To put it simply, using missiles to attack, if used properly, should be more accurate than using rifles and handguns. If you are given ten rounds of bullets, you may be able to hit one or two ten rings in the end, but if the pilot launches the missile well, he can achieve 100 hits, and each shot will be ten rings. On January 18, 1991, the day after the Gulf War broke out, the United States launched an air strike on a hydropower station in Iraq. This hydropower station is located near Baghdad. The United States used two aircraft taking off from the aircraft carrier, one called an A-6 Intruder attack aircraft and the other called an A-7 Corsair attack aircraft. The plane flew over Saudi Arabia, performed an in-flight refueling there, and then began to fly toward the target, launching the missile more than 100 kilometers away from the target. After the aircraft launches the missile, it maneuvers and evades, and the missile continues to fly forward. During the flight, it first performs inertial navigation and then uses GPS satellites for guidance. Inertial navigation means flying in the general direction in which the aircraft is launched. The so-called GPS guidance means that the missile uses 24 GPS global navigation and positioning satellites to automatically locate and correct its trajectory. Usually, the guidance error can reach more than ten kilometers when flying more than 100 kilometers, so the accuracy is still not enough. This requires the missile to be equipped with a more accurate guidance system. When the missile flies ten to fifteen kilometers away from the target, the infrared camera on the missile warhead will automatically turn on and actively search and photograph the target, that is, the panoramic view of the hydropower station. At this time, there is an electronic display screen in the pilot's cockpit. Through the display screen, the controller on the aircraft can see the real scene of the hydropower station 100 kilometers away. This way he can aim through the shooting sight, and he can choose where he wants to hit. The point chosen by the flight controller at that time was a gable wall of the hydropower station, so they controlled the missile to directly blast a large hole in the gable wall, with a diameter of about 10 meters.

The gable wall of the hydropower station was blown up, but the generator was still there. It only achieved phased results and did not achieve the combat goal. Therefore, the aircraft repositioned the target, bound and launched the elements, and launched another attack. So, the second missile was launched again. The second missile was guided in the same way as the first, but this time it was aimed at destroying power generation equipment. Therefore, under the precise guidance of the flight controller, the second missile passed through the ten-meter-diameter hole exploded by the first missile, penetrated the wall, and headed straight for the power plant hall. After the missile entered the hall, the controller used the TV image transmitted on the electronic screen of the aircraft to find the exact location of the generator from a hundred miles away. After finding the generator, he guided the missile to blow it up in one fell swoop. At this time, the power station house was still in good condition, but the generator was blown up. This is similar to a surgeon performing an operation. He wanted to remove the heart, liver, lungs, etc., but other parts would not be damaged. Just like tapping acupuncture points in Chinese martial arts, I only need to tap your acupuncture points to destroy all your martial arts skills, but it does not necessarily kill you. I don't have to destroy your entire building, because it's easy to destroy the entire building, but it's harder to destroy specific targets within the building accurately, but it is very effective. This missile precision guidance technology has already begun to be used in clinical medicine. Of course, the "t missile" used by the doctor is very small, but the guidance and destruction methods are the same. The doctor inserts a catheter with a miniature camera into a certain part of the patient's body, and then observes the lesion on the monitor. If it is a disease such as gallstones, he guides a "t missile" to destroy the stone. It saves a lot of time and reduces a lot of pain for the patient. There were many outstanding achievements in the Gulf War. For example, when the Baghdad Telephone and Telegraph Building was bombed, the laser-guided bomb dropped by the F-117 stealth fighter was dropped from the vent on the top of the building. The pilot was very arrogant at that time. He said that the pilots of your F-16 and F-15 fighter jets need to be escorted by dozens of planes when they go out, but I don't need one. One plane goes alone. Why doesn't the F-117 escort? Because it is stealthy. Allowing non-stealth aircraft to escort it will increase the possibility of being discovered.

He said that when I dropped bombs, I was not like you, who dropped the bomb on the roof and ran away. I guided the 2,000-pound laser-guided bomb all the way to the vent on the roof, and let the bomb go directly down the chimney to the basement before exploding. . If you drop a bomb, you may only blow up a roof, but I dare to drop a laser-guided bomb at an ultra-low altitude of 60 to 80 meters above the ground. One bomb is enough to level a high-rise building. The F-117A pilot boasted more and more, saying that my plane would blow up the men's restroom but not the women's restroom. After this big talk was released, it aroused strong resentment from the U.S. Navy. They said you should stop bragging. Your stealth level can only deceive Saddam. Every time you take off and land, the radar system on our Aegis ships They can all be discovered and tracked. If they were hit with missiles from the ship, they would definitely not escape. During the Kosovo War, Yugoslavia's military and civilians used missiles and anti-aircraft artillery to shoot down an F-117A stealth fighter. Although there were many accidental factors, it also showed that the F-117 also had its moments of success.

When reporting and describing the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, many comrades still use the term indiscriminate bombing. In fact, more of them should refer to precision strikes. When we talk about indiscriminate bombing, we usually have two meanings. One refers to the nature of imperialist barbaric bombing, which is a political vocabulary and intention. From a military perspective, indiscriminate bombing is used less frequently. At least in the early days of the Kosovo War, indiscriminate bombing was not used. Most bombing was precision strikes. There are many precision strike weapons used this time, many of which are newly developed weapons. According to comrades who came back from the battlefield, the accuracy of weapons is very high. The main building of the Socialist Party headquarters here was bombed, but the maternity hospital next to it was still in good condition. This was also the case when the United States attacked Tripoli and Benghazi in Libya in 1986. On one side is a military camp that was bombed, and next to it is a kindergarten. The children inside are fine and not injured at all. Therefore, the accuracy of precision-guided weapons is very high. Of course, there were some accidental explosions this time, but there are several types of accidental explosions. One situation is that the United States is testing weapons. For example, the cluster bombs it used this time have some experimental properties. What are cluster bombs? For example, the grenades we threw in the past were made one by one, and the lethality of each grenade was limited. So people created a tactic in the war. Bundling ten grenades together and throwing them together might blow up a bunker. In other words, after clustering, its blasting power will be greater. Cluster bombs also have the same concept, which is to bundle many bombs together. It looks like this, a plane with a bomb box underneath. Of course, this ammunition box is very large, about three to five meters long. After the aircraft flies over the target, the bomb box automatically opens. The bomb box is equivalent to the mother bomb, and more than a hundred or even hundreds of bomblets fly out from it. The bomblets are about the size of a Coca-Cola bottle or can. Inside the bomblets are explosives and prefabricated fragments. After exploding over the target, hundreds of small steel pieces can fly out. These small steel pieces are a bit like the small steel pieces we use on razors and are very sharp. After it exploded, it quickly spread and rotated around. In this way, the threat to cluster targets is considerable. A small bomb such as a small Coke bottle can kill or injure hundreds of people. There are of course other types of submunitions. For example, more than a hundred small mines can be released after the explosion.

Small mines can be sucked to the top of the tank, hit the top armor of the tank, or use an acoustic fuse on the ground. Ordinary vehicles are very light and make little noise, so they will not explode. When a tank comes over and the sound is loud, or the seismic wave is very strong, it suddenly explodes and destroys the tank. This is Zimu Lei. There are also some small steel balls made of tungsten alloy that fly apart and kill people. Cluster bombs are very cruel. During this war, after a cluster bomb exploded, all the surrounding trees within a hundred square meters were cut down. Once, a cluster bomb killed more than a hundred refugees at the scene, so the lethality was very high.

In addition, some cluster graphite bombs were also used this time. Graphite bombs are mainly used to blow up power grids and cause large-scale power outages. There are two ways to cut off power. One is to turn off the hydropower station. Blowing up a thermal power station is a once and for all solution. After you blow it up, you will no longer be able to generate electricity. Another way is to deal with nuclear power plants. According to international law, nuclear power plants cannot be bombed, and nuclear power plants are protected by international regulations and the laws of war. Yugoslavia has three nuclear power plants. So how do you black out the power without blowing up a nuclear power plant? That is to use graphite bombs. After this kind of bomb explodes, it can release a lot of fibers, which stick to the high-voltage power grid like a fishing net, causing a short circuit in the power grid. This weapon was also used in the Gulf War. During the Gulf War, it mainly used carbon fiber rods. What came out after the Tomahawk cruise missile exploded were many carbon fiber rods, which were placed on high-voltage lines to short-circuit the high-voltage lines. So now it's a step further. This time microwave bombs were also used, mainly strong electromagnetic pulse bombs. Strong electromagnetic pulse bombs can produce huge energy after explosion. This energy is released in the form of electromagnetic energy. At the moment of explosion, this energy may cause induced currents of several hundred amperes. Its duration is short, maybe only a few seconds. But in just a few seconds, it can burn out the computer motherboard and other core electrical components you are working on, making it difficult to repair. So its destructive power is very powerful. Of course, precision guided munitions also need to be further improved.

In this NATO air attack on Yugoslavia, there were many accidental injuries. The main reason was that in order to avoid ground anti-aircraft firepower, NATO aircraft often had to fly at an altitude of more than 5,000 meters. In addition, the bad weather in Yugoslavia also made the NATO aircraft used Precision-guided munitions have become less accurate, resulting in large numbers of civilian casualties.