NOWHERE TO HIDE

摘要

Though guided munitions date back to the Second World War, it was in the Vietnam war that they really came to prominence. Initially, radio-guided and wire-guided missiles were employed, and later TV-guided weapons. But in 1968, the United States Air Force (USAF) undertook combat testing of the world's first laser-guided bomb (LGB), the Texas Instruments BOLT-117. The BOLT-117 combined a 75olb (340kg) M117 bomb with a KMU-342 laser guidance and control kit. This in turn consisted of a gimballed laser seeker on the front of the bomb to home onto reflected laser energy from the target, with tail-mounted control fins to guide the weapon. Initially the Weapon Systems Officer (WSO) in the back seat of an McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom Ⅱ fighter bomber would use an improvised hand-held Airborne Laser Designator (ALD) to illuminate the target, and the bomb (dropped by a second F-4) would then home onto the laser energy reflected by that target. Even with this rudimentary form of guidance, the LGB proved to be more accurate than other guided weapons, and more precise, with a bigger warhead and a lower cost. This was because an LGB was no more than a traditional bomb body mated to a relatively inexpensive add-on guidance kit.