The delivery systems include guided bombs, guided artillery shells, cruise missiles, and antiradiation missiles.
China also is developing its own advanced anti-ship missiles and its navigation satellite-guided bombs, like the U.S. JDAM.
On Sunday, a US B-52 bomber dropped seven 900-kilogram (2, 000-pound) laser-guided bombs near the front line of the fighting.
These can hold up to 84, 500 lb (227 kg) bombs, or 30 cluster bombs, or 24 JDAM guided bombs.
Some 7, 000 unmanned aerial vehicles, from small hand-launched devices to big robotic aircraft fitted with laser-guided bombs, are now deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
F15E Strike Eagles are equipped with the LANTIRN navigation and targeting system which aims to improve the accuracy of attacks by using infrared or laser-guided bombs.
It carries a host of satellite and laser-guided bombs and is able to remain over targets for long periods of time to assist in close-air support for troops on the ground.
Those unmanned aircraft, each armed with Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs, are attacking more targets than ever before, while their pilots sit in the safer venue of Creech Air Force Base in Las Vegas.
Another senior U.S. official said the Pentagon could make up for the MOPs' shortcomings by dropping them along with other guided bombs on top of a bunker's entry and exit points provided the intelligence is available about where they are all located.
The advent of GPS-guided smart bombs has made all of the bombers in the fleet, even the venerable B-52, more lethal than earlier generations of aviators could have imagined.
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The same limited logic informs Israel's strenuous objection to the Pentagon's intention to sell Saudi Arabia Joint Direct Attack Munition satellite-guided "smart bombs, " or JDAMS. The government claims that while it has no quarrel with the Saudis, it fears for the stability of the regime.
At its heart is the shell of his former residence, partially destroyed by American laser-guided "smart" bombs in 1986.
More important than the fact that bombs are now guided is how they are guided.
In some sense, using nuclear weapons is an admission of military failure: failure of those nifty, surgical, precision-guided, multimillion- dollar bombs and missiles armed with "humane" conventional explosives, failure of military stratagems and traditional battlefield skill.
Dumb bombs become precision-guided missiles, thanks to proprietary GPS microchips developed by Rockwell.
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