A bomber is really only as good as the ordinance it carries. And up until three decades ago, bombing technology hadn’t changed that much since bombing raids were first conducted. However, since then, there has been a complete revolution in the way bombers are employed in warfare.
The first strategic bombing campaign arguably took place back in 1917, when a group of German biplane heavy bombers took off from Belgium with the intention of striking targets in London.
Seventeen bombers dropped 72 bombs at speeds of only around 65 miles per hour. Only three of those bombs found the train station that was their target, with the rest falling within a roughly one mile radius of the intended target.
By 1943, aircraft technology had advanced significantly, and so had bomb sights, but, broadly speaking, bombs were still dropped out of an airplane’s open door.
Tellingly, at the time, the “circular error probable” of bombs dropped by American bombers was roughly 1,200 feet, which means that only 16% of bombs landed within a thousand feet of their intended targets. And in 1944, one U.S. Army Air Corps study determined that it took 108 B-17 bombers dropping 648 bombs to achieve a 96% success rate on striking one industrial target.
These figures explain why “carpet bombing” was such a common practice throughout so much of the 20th century, as it increased the likelihood that you’d hit your intended target.
By 1972, things hadn’t changed all that much, as demonstrated by Operation Linebacker 2 which kicked off in December of that year. The operation saw some 200 B-52 bombers drop roughly 20,000 tons of ordnance all across North Vietnam over 11 straight days.
Fifteen B-52s were shot down during the operation, including six in a single day. But because it took so many sorties and bombs to achieve their objectives, this represented only a 2% loss rate, and Linebacker II was considered a success.
However, in 1991’s Desert Storm, things began to shift, largely thanks to the introduction of laser-guided bombs deployed from platforms like the now-legendary F-117 Nighthawk.
While we often think of precision-guided ordnance when we think of Desert Storm, those laser-guided bombs actually represented a fairly small percentage of the bombs dropped on Iraq throughout that air campaign.
In fact, of the roughly 250,000 bombs dropped in Desert Storm, only 10,000 of them, or roughly 4%, were laser-guided. The rest were old-fashioned unguided dumb bombs that despite advancements in bombsight technology, still usually only landed within roughly 200 feet of their intended targets.
But then, in 1999’s Operation Allied Force, the United States brought two new bombing technologies to bear: The first was the B-2 Spirit, which had entered service just two years earlier as the world’s first stealth heavy payload bomber; the second was the JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) guidance kit that turns unguided bombs into guides ones.
Development on the JDAM started in 1992, right after Desert Storm, as the U.S. recognized the immense value of precision-guided bombs, but wanted to overcome the challenges facing laser-guided munitions, namely the laser’s inability to shine through clouds, smoke, or dust.
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So, the military turned to inertial navigation supported by new GPS technologies, all tied in to a tail kit that could be installed on pre-existing unguided bombs, turning them into precision-guided smart weapons.
The JDAM first saw action from the bomb bays of B-2 Spirits in Operation Allied Force.
The B-2s usually carried 16 JDAMs at a time. But rather than needing to send a whole fleet of B-2 bombers, each dropping its bombs at the same target in the hopes that some of them might hit it, as was previously the case, now a single B-2 could hit a single target with just one JDAM-fitted bomb.
In fact, of the 652 JDMs dropped by B-2s throughout Operation Allied Force, 98% of them scored a direct hit.
Partly thanks to JDAM, bombers have evolved into high-end exquisite pieces of technology that can strike individual targets with individual munitions and a supreme degree of accuracy. In a real way, they went from being shotguns to being sniper rifles.
As a result, we have completely changed the way we think of these platforms – and of civilian casualties in warfare. Whereas in the past civilian casualties were often counted in the hundreds or thousands in bombing raids, the same strategic effect could now be accomplished with minimal lose of innocent lives.
Feature Image: Royal Canadian Air Force Cpl. Alexandre Croteau, weapons system technician, prepares a GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) underneath an CF-18 Hornet during ARCTIC EDGE 2026 (AE26) at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, March 2, 2026. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Jack Rodgers)