Going to War - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 107

Fig. 7.2. agm- 84 stand-
off land attack missile.
The Navy's first gps-
guided missile, the
agm-84 was a modi-
fied Harpoon antiship
missile, later also
deployed from aircraft.
(U.S. Navy photograph)
from the uss John F. Kennedy in the Red Sea fired two slams at a uranium
enrichment plant on the second day of the war, January 18, and fired a third at
the same target a week later, on January 25. Aircraft from the uss Saratoga , also
in the Red Sea, fired four slams—two from an a-6 Intruder at a Kuwaiti radio
tower the Iraqis used for military communications, and two others from an
f/a-18 jet fighter at a military building at Taji Airfield, about twenty miles north
of Baghdad. Based on the video images these weapons transmitted, four of
the seven hit their targets; assessing the damage caused is difficult since the
video ceased on impact. Difficulty with the electronic data link and/or loss of
gps signals affected the three missiles that did not perform as expected. 17
Strikes Yield Cautious Assessments
Four hits in seven tries is not a horrible ratio for a weapon rushed into service,
but too few missiles were launched to draw statistically meaningful conclu-
sions. That was apparently also true of the calcms. The thirty-ive missiles
the Air Force fired were later reported to have achieved 85-91 percent of the
mission's objectives, with only two going astray, as many as thirty-one hitting
their targets squarely, and one slicing its aim point—a telephone pole—in half.
Hard numbers with official endorsement are elusive. 18 Queried by reporters
about the missile's accuracy when the weapon was revealed during a press
briefing, Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams said, “The Air Force considers
it to have been very effective. But the experts who analyzed this don't believe
that it is absolutely possible to pinpoint the precise success rate.” 19 The Pen-
tagon's Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress , delivered in
1992, states that the calcm (which at the time was still called an alcm) “played