Technology
Precision-guided munitions, such as the United States Air Force guided missile AGM-130, were heralded as key in allowing military strikes to be made with a minimum of civilian casualties compared to previous wars, although they were not used as often as more traditional, less accurate bombs. Specific buildings in downtown Baghdad could be bombed whilst journalists in their hotels watched cruise missiles fly by.
Precision-guided munitions amounted to approximately 7.4% of all bombs dropped by the coalition. Other bombs included cluster bombs, which disperse numerous submunitions, and daisy cutters, 15,000-pound bombs which can disintegrate everything within hundreds of yards.
Global Positioning System units were important in enabling coalition units to navigate easily across the desert.
Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) and satellite communication systems were also important. Two examples of this are the U.S. Navy Grumman E-2 Hawkeye and the U.S. Air Force Boeing E-3 Sentry. Both were used in command and control area of operations. These systems provided essential communications links between the ground forces, air forces, and the navy. It is one of the many reasons why the air war was dominated by the Coalition Forces.
American-made color photocopiers were used to produce some of Iraq's battle plans. Some of the copiers contained concealed high-tech transmitters that revealed their positions to American electronic warfare aircraft, leading to more precise bombings.
Read more about this topic: Gulf War
Famous quotes containing the word technology:
“Our technology forces us to live mythically, but we continue to think fragmentarily, and on single, separate planes.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamics that present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)