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This year marks 20th anniversary of the day in 1998 when Boeing delivered the first production model of the satellite-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition to the US Air Force. JDAM (j-dam') destined to transform the way in which the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps conducted air strikes against ground targets, because it delivered pinpoint accuracy regardless of weather conditions.
Precision bombing had been a dream of aviators since the first bombers were built. If pilots could accurately attack key bottlenecks in an enemy's military apparatus and war economy, the adversary would be crippled and likely defeated. Unintended damage of civilian targets would be minimised. Precision bombing thus had the potential to be decisive, efficient and even humane compared to previous ways of waging war,
But hitting targets accurately turned out to be much harder in the early days than planners had expected. In one particularly disappointing episode during World War Two, 835 bomber sorties against a single Japanese factory produced only 4% damage while sacrificing 40 bombers. The inability to hit point targets in Europe and Japan led the US Air Force, which was then part of the Army, to turn to indiscriminate area bombing of cities.
The advent of nuclear weapons made the newly independent Air Force (in 1948) first among equals in military councils after the...