Catalyst: US Air Force Lt. Col. David Lujan helped spur the development of the new GBU-54 guided bomb and he is currently the deputy commander of the 332nd Expeditionary Operations Group. (Tom A. Peter)
US Air Force uses new guided bomb in Iraq
The GBU-54 – used for the first time in Iraq on Aug. 12 – will help US forces hit moving targets and minimize civilian casualties, say military officials.
By Tom A. Peter | Staff Writer for The Christian Science Monitor/ August 28, 2008 edition
Reporter Tom A. Peter describes a new bomb designed to hit moving targets.
Reporter Tom A. Peter
Balad, Iraq
Retreating insurgents will have a harder time escaping US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan now that the United States Air Force has begun using the next generation of guided bombs designed specifically to destroy moving targets. While guided munitions have been key to air operations for years, most were developed to hit stationary targets.
On Wednesday, Air Force officials announced that F-16s had dropped the guided bomb unit-54 (GBU-54) in combat for the first time, destroying a moving insurgent truck in Iraq’s Diyala Province on Aug. 12.
Designed largely to meet the battlefield needs of commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, the new bomb shows how the Air Force has begun adapting its arsenal to conduct counterinsurgency missions where accuracy is critical.
“In COIN [counterinsurgency operations] we’ve got to be more precise,” says Brig. Gen. Brian Bishop, 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing commander stationed in Balad, Iraq. “Hitting moving targets has always been very, very difficult, and I would say that it’s not until recent years that we’ve been able to truly have technology that allows us to do that with a pretty good degree of certainty.”
Created by Boeing Company, the GBU-54 works by combining Global Position Systems (GPS) targeting capabilities with a laser guidance system in a 500-pound bomb, a standard piece of ordnance that most airplanes can carry. The pilot sets an initial GPS coordinate as the target and then releases the bomb. He then follows the target with a laser and the bomb continually updates its GPS destination until it makes contact.
Prior to the GBU-54, most bombs intended for vehicles or other moving targets were meant for tanks, which move more slowly and cannot access many of the back roads used by insurgents in civilian vehicles. To take out many militants on the run, pilots had to improvise with existing weapons platforms, adjusting their techniques to make the bomb delivery fit the mission requirements.
Consequently, it was easy for pilots to miss their target, and strikes lacked the necessary element of precision required in a counterinsurgency. Often times insurgents got away because commanders had to abort an airstrike to avoid potentially unacceptable levels of collateral damage.
“One of the things we noticed here is how many targets that we didn’t hit because we didn’t have a weapon that was designed to go after a mover,” says Lt. Col. Dave Lujan, 332nd Expeditionary Operations Group deputy commander who also helped leverage the development of the new weapon. “It became an urgent operational need to have a weapon that would be able to engage a mover.”
In early 2007, Boeing began developing the GBU-54 in conjunction with the Air Force and the Navy. Traditionally, designing a new weapon can take up to 10 years, depending on the requirements, but engineers managed to deliver a completed product to airmen in
Iraq and Afghanistan only 17 months later. Air Force officials attribute the rapid turnaround to the intense operational demand for the system in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ultimately, Lieutenant Colonel Lujan says that the GBU-54 will allow for a more efficient Air Force. “It’s a very flexible weapon,” he says, “especially in an urban warfare environment where you need that flexibility.”
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Comments
2. Tom | 08.29.08
How many village schools can be built for the price of one GBU-54? Last I heard, it took about USD15000 to build a 100-student primary school with local materials and labor in Afghanistan.
3. Ben | 08.29.08
My question is who the real terrorist? Oh, it the United States who sold weopons to Iraq purchased on the black market from Russia. At least in Iraq, these guys are defending their land. A US demacracy is does not exist we have two canidates for president. This not a demcracy, but a land controled by 5% yes a little of wealth travel down to the gutter. Well American meet your new president bought and paid for in China. See your little War that cost 1 Trillion dallors is paid by China purchase debt. However, the rumor is, they getting ready to “pull the plug”. Like Russia the US will colapse from because of greedy none skilled DOD contractors. And Washington, Congress is probably the most to blame.
4. Buel S. Combs III | 08.29.08
Yes, John, it IS humanitarian. The simple, inexpensive solution to the targeting problem is not pinpoint accuracy utilizing highly trained personnel, but carpet bombing with cheap “dumb” munitions. Works every time.
What certain whiny critics of the brutally aggressive United States failed to notice in this story is that, prior to obtaining this precise weapon, targets were ABORTED due to concerns about collateral damage. Sounds like proof positive of a complete lack of any humanitarian sentiments to me.
5. John | 08.29.08
John, let me ask you a question. How humanitarian is it to stand by and do nothing while an insurgent force straps bombs to children, women, and the mentally ill and blows up innocent people? Yes, it is a sin to kill. It is also a sin to do nothing while others kill. The only point in question is, which is the worse sin? So to rephrase your comment, it is better to do nothing while innocent people die? Too simplify it for you….This is a great invention that will help kill more bad guys so they can’t kill good guys. It will increase accuracy so good guys won’t be killed by accident. I don’t like war any more than the next guy but “we didn’t start the fire”. All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing!
6. Molon Labe | 08.29.08
Terrorists will have you believe this bomb is bad. It is a great new tool for the air force. Now the cowardly terrorists cannot run from us and hide after they commit their cowardly murderous acts.
John Ishmael: How is it “aggressive” to take out terrorists who kill innocent people? Oh that’s right, you terrorists hate it when you might get hurt killing innocents. You try and turn it around and say we are the aggressors when we are the protectors of freedom and innocents. Cutting off heads and leaving bombs on the side of the road is not our idea of a humanitarian society.
8. Ed | 08.29.08
How many village schools can be destroyed by one truckload of terrorists that we did NOT bomb? I was surprised to hear the anti American animus of the first few responses - then I realized that al Qaida have access to the CSM too.
9. Joe | 08.29.08
“Tom | 08.29.08
How many village schools can be built for the price of one GBU-54?”
Better yet, imagine how many madrassas teaching islamic hate can be taken out with one GBU-54. Go air force!
10. Lou | 08.29.08
Use the right word~ kill is from the 1611KJV; a modern translation of the Hebrew is “murder” A police officer, or soldier, that takes a life under orders is yes, a killer, but not a murderer. 6th commandment is very clear~ and to me, “Murder is taking a life you do not have the authority to take” Other than that small thing, John(4) and Buel(3) Right on! Horah!!
11. veteran | 08.29.08
Speaking of villages, I see several are missing their idiots by the looks of some of the comments here. Sniveling and whining about aggressiveness, lack of schools and one illiterate rant about Democracy, or lack thereof.
Sheesh people, wake up and realize 3,000 of your fellow citizens were killed on September 11th because our society is hated by some 7th century fanatics who will not stop trying to kill us if we just build more schools, become less aggressive by dropping teddy bears when we are attacked, or offer better political candidates.
My family can just as easily be killed by these fanatics, and I am very happy there are those not willing to stand idly by and watch it happen hoping they will not be killed if we were just nicer to these murderers.
12. Michael W. Perry | 08.29.08
Relax everyone. Neglecting the horrors of Saddam’s rule or Islamic terrorism is nothing new. Pacifists have been soft on murderous regimes and dictators since modern pacifism began just before World War I.
Norman Angel, winner of the 1933 Noble Peace Prize, offers a good example. In 1933, AFTER Hitler took power in Germany and began to murder his opponents, he told his fellow pacifists, “No one pretends now–as the papers quoted above used to pretend–that the war [WWI] was due to the special wickedness of Germans, the sudden swoop of the satanic wolf in a peaceful world lust to eat such harmless lambs as France and Russia.” Six years later, Germany would plunge the the world into the bloodiest war in human history.
Pacifist attitudes like that led G. K. Chesterton to warn: “Pacifism and Prussianism [Militarism] are always in alliance by a fatal logic far beyond any conscious conspiracy.” That fatal logic is that both believe that might makes right, that a Saddam who killed hundreds of thousands of his own people and launched two wars against neighboring countries in less than a decade, shouldn’t be stopped by US intervention and shouldn’t be removed from power.
Militarists and pacifists, two sides of the same coin. Both make wars more likely and more horrible.
–Michael W. Perry, Seattle, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace.
13. J | 08.29.08
Does anybody have John Ish Ishmael’s GPS location to feed into one of those GBU-54’s? 
14. Jericho | 08.30.08
How many Kurds did Sadaam gas at Habaja, 40,000? Babies, Moms, KIds, Grandparents all fell there.
How many civilians did Al Qaeda kill on Sept. 11? Over 3000. Babies, Moms, Kids, Grandparents all fell then.
War is the business of killing people and breaking things. Don’t want to be killed or have your things broken don’t start a war with America.
15. George Urban | 08.30.08
Hey Jericho, in case you forgot Iraq didn’t start a war with America, the US decided to go thousands of miles to start a war with a country that had nothing to do with Sept 11, and guess what , thousands of innocent Iraqis died because of it, you don’t have to start a war with America to have them invade your country and kill you for trying to defend it. Anyone who tries to defend there country is conveniently called a terrorist.
16. rkerg | 08.31.08
I am reminded back when Bush was running for his first term that he ridiculed the Clinton
administration for using expensive guided armaments in an attempt to kill Bin Laden.
Today, 7 years later, Mr Bush is perhaps slightly less the boisterous buffoon that he was then. But only slightly.
17. Rajiv Thind | 08.31.08
GBU-54? At first I thought it was new model of iPod, but well, that’s a bomb. Of course terrorists must be bombed and killed, everyone knows that.
But records show that paranoid American and NATO forces have a bad history of bombing civilian targets: bombing Afghan wedding parties for example. Wedding parties move you know…
All I can think of is that this GBU-54 has made it even more dangerous to get married in Afghanistan. Alas…
18. Ralph | 09.02.08
One million Iraqis have died since the war began. Good work, US. Get over your worship of the military. It’s idolatry. You cannot be a christian and be for war. Read the Book.
19. Keith | 09.03.08
You can’t be a Christian and be for war? What Bible did you read? And what history books? All the best wars were fought over religious dogma. Christians have been right in the thick of things.
20. Richard Ballance | 09.03.08
WOW! We went to Iraq because we had a treaty to stop the first war with Iraq (his fathers). However Saddam kept violating the treaty. He was working on wmd’s, most of it was shipped to Syria while we were prparing to invade. Surely you read the recent stories about yellow cake being removed from Iraq. We went into Iraq with UN approval.
Yes a lot of people have died and been wounded in Iraq. This is a war. Saddam was paying suicide bombers to blow themselves up in Isreal. More people have died in Iraq from suicide bombers than from US action. I can understand constarnation over killing “innocent” women and children. If the target is a house holding 10 Iraqi combatants, 3 women and 1 kid, do we not attack them? They involve their families on purpose so we won’t attack them. The casulties in this “war” are far fewer than any war we have been involved in. On DDay, how many died on Omaha Beach? How many died in the few weeks it took to capture Okinawa? How many Americans died on the Battann March? We have Humiliated a few prisoners, But they have Killed every prisoner they have taken. We cannot allow this to be another Vietnam.
It doesn’t matter how many Schools or school books you can buy for the price of 1 bomb. The muslim extremists want to kill us, all of us. you can’t negotiate with them, you are an infidel and they don’t have to be honest with an infidel.
21. Rajiv Thind | 09.04.08
It is rather interesting to see so many Pro-War comments on here. I thought most Americans were sick of it all, especially as American economy was slowing down, unemployment was increasing etc. But no. These pro war sentiments sound like a good news for Republicans in the upcoming presidential election.
Winning that election should be a piece of cake for Republicans. They don’t have to worry about rising fuel prices, unemployment, immigration, medical care etc. All they have to do is to fan these feelings of ”terrorists want to kill us” and Obama is too soft on them Muslim madmen.
To ice the cake Republicans can always pick a fight with Russia and exchange some angry words with Kremlin. Dick Cheney is already doing that by taunting Russia. It’s election time boys and girls and you can never have too many enemies. *Wink wink*
22. Bill Zeme | 09.08.08
Americans are sick of war and dislike war more than any other nation. Americans just realize that war is necessary to preserve God’s gift of liberty because there is evil in the world and evil wants to destroy anything good.
Are Americans and the Republic of the United States perfect? No, but no other group of people nor any other nation in the history of the world has done as much as America has to preserve liberty and improve humanity throughout the whole world than the United States.
Americans are not better than everyone else. By the Grace of God, Americans just have better values than everyone else.
Go USA!
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1. JOHN ISH ISHMAEL | 08.28.08
How very humanitarian of this aggressive nation! It can now devastate an area around any “suspect” moving targets.
The US already does this via its 360 rule.