Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!military
From: gwh%sandstorm.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Cruise missiles and kitchen windows
Summary: They're that accurate
Message-ID: <1990Aug31.030712.23973@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 31 Aug 90 03:07:12 GMT
References: <1990Aug8.030228.25162@cbnews.att.com> <1990Aug14.034338.10270@cbnews.att.com> <1990Aug29.014406.7218@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: The OCF Gang: Making Tomorrows Mistakes Today
Lines: 55
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: gwh%sandstorm.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert)

In article <1990Aug29.014406.7218@cbnews.att.com> jon@cs.washington.edu (Jon Jacky) writes:
>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.

	The tests run since the missiles were debugged (past the first 
operationsl production batch) have had something like a 94% "hit" percentage
with a CEP of something like 2 meters.  [ <= figures the Tohmawk TLAM-C ]
For example, the oft-shown (though somewhat debated) sequence of the tomhawk 
flying from off the California coast to nail a single airplane target on the
ground was flown w/o outside interference.  Most skeptics of this weapons
performance are working with flight-test era test results, not current ones.
(personal pontification: a common problem...you have to read current sources).
	While 2 meters may not fly through the window of choice, I have little
doubt that it's good enough given what building (or room) someone's going to be
in at time X.  (Next problem: guaranteeing their being there then...).

>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.

'Technical Problems' in this case weren't.  They were Rules Of Engagement
problems.  The ROE for that mission absolutely required two systems
seperately ID the target, positively, or weapons could not be dropped.  One
plane had a perfectly good radar attack profile and perfectly overflew their
target vainly trying to get their IR camera to work to get the needed '2nd
ID'.  (The flight crew were NOT happy).  Most of the planes did make runs.
All but two hit their targets (the one above and the one that had a bomb
rack problem and lost one into the french embassy (I think, that's what I
heard: I don't think there was an official explanation of this one...) ).
	

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