Air Weapons: April 2, 2005

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The U.S. Air Force recently ran some tests to verify long held suspicions that the radar bomb sight used by the B-52 was not performing as accurately as it was supposed to. The problem wont be fixed right away, because the overall accuracy of the system (used for dropping large numbers of dumb bombs in carpet bombing missions) is not affected. Moreover, B-52 rarely drop dumb bombs any more. The troops on the ground much prefer smart bombs, and so does the air force. With smart bombs, a B-52 can hit far more targets per sortie.