One of the more interesting documents to come out of the federal government in the last decade was the General Accounting Office's Report number PEMD-96-10, titled Operation Desert Storm: Operation Desert Storm Air War.
"Only 8 percent of the delivered munitions tonnage was guided, but at
a price that represented 84 percent of the total munitions cost. During Desert Storm, the ratio of guided-to- unguided munitions delivered did not vary, indicating that the relative preferences among these types of munitions did not change over the course of the campaign. More generally, Desert Storm demonstrated that many systems incorporating complex or advanced technologies require specific operating conditions to operate effectively. These
conditions, however, were not consistently encountered in Desert Storm and cannot be assumed in future contingencies.
Lastly, many of DOD's and manufacturers' postwar claims about weapon system performance--particularly the F-117, TLAM, and laser-guided bombs--were overstated, misleading, inconsistent with the best available data, or unverifiable."
Read it yourself. It's a good thing to know what actually happened the last time we were shooting at Iraqi targets.
Posted by dglynn at February 17, 2003 09:07 AM