A guided bomb (also known as a smart bomb, guided bomb unit, or GBU) is a precision-guided munition intended to precisely hit a specific target, and to minimize damage to things other than the target.
Because the damage effects of explosive weapons fall off with distance according to a power law, even modest improvements in accuracy (and hence reduction in miss distance) enable a target to be effectively attacked with fewer or smaller bombs. Thus, even if some bombs miss, fewer air crews are put at risk and the harm to civilians and the amount of collateral damage may be somewhat reduced.
The creation of precision-guided munitions resulted in the retroactive renaming of older bombs as unguided bombs or "dumb bombs".
Read more about Guided Bomb: History
Famous quotes containing the words guided and/or bomb:
“The guided missiles,
The black-and-white angels follow each quirk and jink of
The evasive sheep, play grandmother’s-steps behind them,
Freeze to the ground, or leap to head off a straggler”
—Cecil Day Lewis (1904–1972)
“Lincoln said, “With malice toward none and with charity to all.” Nowadays they say, “Think the way I do or I’ll bomb the daylights out of you.””
—Robert Riskin (1897–1955)