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From: jon@cs.washington.edu (Jon Jacky)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Cruise missiles and kitchen windows (was: U.S. options against Iraq)
Summary: Support for claims of extraordinary cruise missile accuracy requested
Message-ID: <1990Aug29.014406.7218@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 29 Aug 90 01:44:06 GMT
References: <1990Aug8.030228.25162@cbnews.att.com> <1990Aug14.034338.10270@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: U of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle
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From: jon@cs.washington.edu (Jon Jacky)

Several postings to this newsgroup have asserted that there is "no doubt" that
cruise missiles could be "quite literally flown through the kitchen window" 
(or, more to the point of the question that started all this, through the
window of some foreign head of state whom we wished to assassinate).

I request that the people who made this claim please cite *tests* that show
that the claimed performance has in fact been demonstrated.  There is a big
difference between claimed or theoretical performance and actual performance.
Is there any record of an actual cruise missile ever having been flown a 
realistic distance (hundreds of miles at least) exclusively under the control 
of its onboard guidance system, and then through a kitchen-window sized
target?  I would be impressed by a single case of this ever having been done,
although for military planning purposes it would have to have been done many
times, enough times to establish the reliability.  There have been many cases
reported in the press in which cruise missiles went totally off course during
tests.

How did this "kitchen window" business get started anyway?  I saw an interview
with Robert Cooper, who was then director of the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, that was made about 1985.  Cooper said that one of the results
of a research project that DARPA then had going *might* be a guidance system
that could send a cruise missile "through a particular window in the Kremlin."
Cooper did not say this technology was at hand.

I hope it is clear why uncritical acceptance of exaggerated claims is not
a good thing.  

Incidentally, this cruise-missile-as-assassination-weapon business recalls
the US bombing of Qaddafi's compound in Tripoli in 1986.  In that incident,
laser-guided "smart bombs" were supposed to make it possible to destroy 
Qaddafi's house without doing much damage to surrounding residential
neighborhoods.   In fact most of the F-111's assigned to that target were
not even able to make their bombing runs, due to technical problems, and one 
of those that tried went far off course, bombing a residential neighborhood
near the French embassy instead.  According to the account of that raid 
in David C. Martin and John Walcott's BEST LAID PLANS (Harper and Row, 1988),
the Air Force staff charged with planning the mission were well aware of the
difficulties and strongly recommended against including that target, 
but someone on the National Security Council staff insisted anyway.

Jonathan Jacky, University of Washington, Seattle jon@gaffer.rad.washington.edu