In a bid to reduce civilian casualties, the Navy is looking into a Selectable Output Weapon (dial-a-blast, basically). Link to story here Personally and professionally, I'm interested in seeing if that technology really works. Reduction of collateral damage is good when trying to win hearts and minds. I wish I could be part of testing out the RSP's though.
While that's a pretty cool idea I'm almost against it because of task-saturation in the cockpit. How many JDAMs were dropped on the wrong coordinates during the opening months of OEF-A? Pilots have CFIT enough as is, now they have to determine what blast the mission requires? Or a JTAC will have to make that call and hope the pilot dials it in properly? Besides, I'm sure Boris and Natasha are awaiting this technology.
If gun runs aren't safe enough and you're that worried about collateral, then maybe you should just pack it up and move to the 6 o'clock.
A "safer bomb"... SDMs are a pretty "small/safe" blast as it is, and gun runs are preffered in theater over bombs to reduce collateral. So if a gun run or smaller bomb isn't sufficient, then why drop a bomb at all? And as for rendering safe, we just had a guy killed on Bragg a couple months ago with a munition that hasn't been dropped since '95. It was a submunition of course, and was buried 12" deep and was still sensitive enough to be detonated by a man. That's pretty light pressure- 170-200 pounds through a foot of dirt.
