Gulf War

:See also: Iraq War and Gulf War (disambiguation)

Technology

Precision guided munitions (PGMs, also "smart bombs"), such as the United States Air Force guided missile AGM-130, were heralded as key in allowing military strikes to be made with a minimum of civilian casualties compared to previous wars. Specific buildings in downtown Baghdad could be bombed whilst journalists in their hotels watched cruise missiles fly by. PGMs amounted to approximately 7.4% of all bombs dropped by the coalition. Other bombs included cluster bombs, which break up into clusters of bomblets, and daisy cutters, 15,000-pound bombs which can disintegrate everything within hundreds of yards.

Related Topics:
Precision guided munitions - United States Air Force - Baghdad - Cluster bombs - Daisy cutters

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Scud is a low-technology rocket bomb that Iraq used, launching them into both Saudi Arabia and Israel. Some bombs caused extensive casualties, others caused little damage. Concerns were raised of possible chemical or biological warheads on these rockets, but if they existed they were not used.

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America's Patriot missile defense was used for the first time in combat. The U.S. military claimed to have shot down many Scud rockets in flight, with an effectiveness of 100%. Afterwards, it was demonstrated that the Patriots' effectiveness was primarily psychological: some claim that their effectiveness was as low as between 0% to 10%. However, there really is no good evidence to prove whether the Scuds were intercepted or not, so no figures are really backed up by undisputed facts. The higher figures tend to be calculated based on the percentage of Scud warheads which were known to have impacted and exploded compared to the number of Scud missiles launched, but due to factors such as duds, misses and impacts which were not reported (some Scud variations were re-engineered in a manner outside their original tolerance, and said to have frequently failed or broken up in flight), this is not really a good way to measure effectiveness. The lowest figures are typically based upon the number of interceptions where there is proof that the warhead was hit by at least one missile, but due to the way the poorly built Al-Hussein (Scud derivative) missiles broke up in flight, it was often hard to tell which piece was the warhead, and there were few radar tracks which were actually stored which could be analyzed later, hence the very low figures. Realistically the actual performance was probably somewhere in between. The U.S. Army maintains the Patriot delivered a "miracle performance" in the Gulf War. http://www.ceip.org/files/projects/npp/resources/georgetown/PatriotPaper.pdf

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Global Positioning System units were key in enabling coalition units to navigate easily across the desert. Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) and satellite communication systems were also important.

Related Topics:
Global Positioning System - Airborne Warning and Control System

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