US Army working on Next generation swarms of hyper precision munitions that can penetrate A2/AD environment and hit a wide variety of dispersed targets

One of the most important developments in the history of twentieth century warfare has been the emergence of the precision weapon: the weapon which can be aimed and directed against a single target, relying on external guidance or its own guidance system. Launched from aircraft, ships, submarines, and land vehicles, or even by individual soldiers on the ground, the precision weapon exemplifies the principle of the low-cost threat that forces a high-cost and complicated defence.

For example in the Gulf War, only 4.3 per cent of the tonnage expended on Iraqi forces by American airmen were precision munitions consisting of laser-guided bombs, Yet they are credited with causing approximately 75 per cent of the serious damage inflicted upon Iraqi strategic and operational targets. It was, overall, the laser- guided bomb that dominated the battlefield, the counter-air campaign against Iraqi airfields, strikes against command and control and leadership targets, and the anti-bridge and rail campaign

Against point targets, laser-guided bombs offered distinct advantages over ‘dumb’ bombs. The most obvious was that the guided bombs could correct for ballistic and release errors in flight. Explosive loads could also be more accurately tailored for the target, since the planner could assume most bombs would strike in the place and manner expected. Unlike ‘dumb’ bombs, LGB’s released from medium to high altitude were highly accurate … Desert Storm reconfirmed that LGB’s possessed a near single-bomb target-destruction capability, an unprecedented if not revolutionary development in aerial warfare.

However, Mark Gunzinger and Bryan Clark, authors of a new report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments have examined the future of precision strike warfare. An enemy with effective countermeasures against platforms — generally aircraft or ships — or individual PGMs will reduce the effectiveness of precision strike weapons, Gunzinger noted.

A US military accustomed to operating in a permissive environment, where “pretty much 100 percent of its PGMs would arrive on target” and where strike planners often think of how many targets can be hit per aircraft sortie, might see a significant drop in effectiveness, to maybe 50 percent.

For example modern tanks like Armata are designed with active protection systems designed to kill incoming missiles before they even strike the tank. Frank Fresconi, of Army Research Laboratory’s Aeromechanics and Flight Control Group, in Maryland is working on Collaborative Cooperative Engagement (CCOE) programme which aims to develop a swarm of precision weapons which can defeat the countermeasures which are only designed to protect against one or two simultaneous missile attack.