Paul Vebber
Posts: 11430
Joined: 3/29/2000 From: Portsmouth RI Status: offline
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In a land battle where you "win the field" its a matter of counting hulks. When you are using airpower it is far more problematic. BDA (Bomb or Battle damage assessment) is a major issue for our present military with a lot of effort going into UAVs and "ordance "with eyeballs" so there is either a live feed for a considerable period after the target is struck to see if the enemy recovers it, or there is a transmission up to the point of impact that gives an exact impact point in the final frame that can be evaluated. A new family of "loitering munitions" such as LOCAS has been proposed to combine the two - a "Swarm" of LOCAS munitions forms a mini-CAS (CLose Air SUpport) 'stack' over an area and can be called in with GPS coordinates while others orbiting above give the top down feed. If the target is fouled by a blue or white target, the mission can be aborted right up to impact. If impact is made, the final frames of the impacting munition can be reviewed, together with the live feed from above (assuming you are working "over teh next hill" and don;t have good LOS view) and if necessary another munition can be designated to run in off the CAS stack. In Kosovo, the reliance on "blind bombs" - though "precision guded" required follow up BDSA srties by recon configured aircraft, usually with a significant (up to several hours) delay., THis allowed the Serbs to recover vehcles, put turrets ack on hulks to look "live - or to construct dummy turrets or whole dummy vehicles resulting ion the same hulk being atacked 4 5 or more times. The Air Force, with a large BDA effort - counted hundreds of vehicels destroyed, when the real number after the war was over turned out to be dozens, not hundreds. A good question, and a significant issue for military's looking to non-LOS air based and "over the next hill" anti-vehicle weapons and tactics.
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