The US military is overly invested in short-range direct attack bombs and not enough in long-range, stealthy smart weapons and aircraft, and this must change if it ever expects to challenge the air defences of nations like China, Russia, Iran or North Korea.
That’s the assessment of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, which released a new report this week on “sustaining America’s precision-strike advantage”.
The crux of the argument presented by authors Mark Gunzinger and Bryan Clark is that while shorter-range weapons like joint direct attack munitions (JDAMs) and small diameter bombs (SDBs) have kill rates as high as 100% when an aircraft can get close to its target, that won’t be possible in large force-on-force salvo against large military force that has its own guided, smart weapons.