European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - January 25, 1991, Darmstadt, Hesse Silicon Success weaponry powered by computer chips by William j. Broad new York times i f the Pentagon a claims of Success in the. Persian Gulf War Bear up a Heto of the conflict will be the ubiquitous computer Chip no larger than a. Fin email and usually made of Silicon which processes reams of information in an instant for planes bombs sensors and cruise missiles. Quot it s the Triumph of Silicon Over steel Quot said John e. Pike a senior analyst at the federation of american scientists a private group in Washington. The chips prowess has been evident As highly computerized Patriot anti missile missiles Flash from their launchers in the Middle East and Streak skyward to a intercept iraqi scud missiles. Military experts say the computerized weapons of the International Force in the persian Gulf War seem to be working much cautioning that the Overall performance of the new weaponry is Notye know experts say computers big and Small have clearly endowed the equipment with vast new Powers of precision and coordination Large computers Are now synchronizing the forces arrayed against Iraq and churning out detailed Battle plans. A a a a a a computerized hammers Are snarling iraqi smart weapons with tiny computer Quot brains Quot Are. Zeroing in on targets with deadly precision. Quot what a making All this work is weapons based on v information instead of the volume of fire Power Quot said James f. Digby a Rand corp. Analyst who wrote an influential paper in 1976 on precision guided munitions Quot it reduces greatly the tonnage of explosives you have to ship experts stress that the computerized arms Are anything but invincible As driven Home by the difficulty experienced by planes and satellites carrying in locating Mobile scud launchers. Even so Many experts say the Gulf War appears to. Mark the comm of age of computerized weaponry a goal that has been much heralded and criticized for 15 years As the emerging systems acquired a mixed recon cd. Of Success and failure. A / Quot in a impressed Quot said Herbert f. York a former head of. Pentagon research and development who teaches at the University of California. Quot it took such along time. And its still extremely expensive. But some of the disappointments in be Felt Over the years Are being washed the highly computerized systems in the War Are Navy Tomahawk cruise missiles pave tack laser guided bombs. Air Force f-117a stealth aircraft and the army. Patriot anti missile system whose interceptions of iraqi scud missiles in flight is a wartime first. Quot Many experts cautioned that the Public s View of the War is limited by Pentagon censorship and selective. Presentation of facts so that computerized failures Are generally not known. A \. Quot everything is looking pretty Good and i must say i m said Eugene j. Carroll a retired rear Admiral and Deputy director of the Center for defense information a private group in Washington. Quot but All the news is coming through a filler. We see the hits but not the misses. Management of the news has put an emphasis on the Success of our new . Pierre Sprey a Washington based defense consultant and longtime advocate of simpler military systems that rely less heavily on computer chips dismissed much of upbeat news As disinformation. Quot they re re targeting a lot of the places where they already claimed great Success Quot he said. Quot the bombing just Isnit that accurate. In the future the ineffectiveness is going to become painfully a the Promise of computerized weaponry was first demonstrated in the Vietnam War. The air Force Foi example flew several Hundred unsuccessful sorties to Knock out the Thanh Hoa Bridge with 10 planes being. Shot Down. Page 16 the stars and stripes a finally four phantom jets armed with pave Way i laser guided bombs destroyed it in a single run. But As new More advanced generations of smart ,. Weapons emerged in the 1970s and 80s, they. Engendered fierce debate As Field trials revealed. Shortcomings and failures. The were widely faulted As too costly too ambitious and too. Unreliable to be suitable for War. The criticism was bolstered when technical glitches hit some military actions including the 1983 invasion of. Grenada the 1986 raid on Libya and the 1989 invasion of Panama. A the height of High tech failings occurred in 1988 when. The Navy Cruiser Vincennes equipped with the highly computerized Aegis radar the world s most advanced naval air defense system mistakenly shot Down an iranian commercial Airliner killing All on Board. Given this history private military analysts were \ openly apprehensive this fall and Winter about a possible War in the persian Gulf especially because of the. Challenge of coordinating the vast multinational Force. A. Predictions of chaos abounded with experts saying that the the first casualties would be self inflicted. Instead the omnipresent computer Chip appears to have come to the Rescue. A. A at american military Headquarters for the War in Riyadh saudi Arabia a Bevy of Large computers has generated the Overall Battle plan and every Day churns out hundreds of pages of detailed action orders. A Quot we have a lot of computers Quot it. Gen. Charles a. A Horner the . Air commander in the Gulf told reporters. Quot you can bring together the tens of thousands of minor details radio frequencies altitudes Tanker rendezvous bomb configurations who supports who who a flying escort who so there Are just thousands and thousands of details and we work them together As one group put them together in what we Call a common air tasking order and it provides a Sheet of music that everybody same song . A. Another quiet aspect of the Chip revolution is tiny computerized radio receivers that pick up signals from the american military s orbiting Nav Star satellites allowing. Tanks ships and planes to pinpoint their positions reportedly Down to an accuracy of less than 100 feet that navigational data in turn is often fed into smart weapons before they Speed toward targets. A a a a a a a Quot the More precise their initial position the More precise their journey will be Quot said Ron Hertenstein vice president for research at forecast International inc., a Newtown Conn. Firm that markets defense and aerospace information. A. For instance the Aerial assault against Iraq was . Off by Waves of Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from Navy warships in the Gulf and the red sea. Flying Low and largely undetected the smart missiles hit key targets such As iraqi command centers. It the tomahawks never before used in combat five tiny on Board computers that read internal maps and. Process information from sensors to perform course corrections in flight. Hertenstein noted that accuracy also cuts Down on. Civilian causalities. Quot we can attack a target in the Middle of Baghdad and keep the damage to innocent people to a minimum he said. Quot that certainly does make the situation More. Acceptable if not a another highly computerized system is electronic. Warfare aircraft including the Navy s ea-6b prowler and the air forces ef-111a Raven. These aircraft have electronic hammers that Send out High Energy pulses to disarm or disorient enemy radar and other. Communications a the jamming devices Are directed by powerful a computers that first sense an enemy s frequencies an then tailor false signals to fog an enemy s radar display with Bright spots making it impossible to find real information. A a. Carroll Laid the Quot pronounced ineffectiveness Quot of the iraqi armed forces to such computerized impediments. Quot we be penetrated their system so severely with our hammers and shookers that they can t see us coming and their anti aircraft batteries Are absolutely also impressing Many experts has been the performance of. The Patriot system which uses a phased array radar to track enemy targets and a powerful Bank of computers to actively guide anti missile missiles toward their targets. The Patriot initially was developed to shoot Down a enemy aircraft not High Speed missiles. But in recent years it has been modified mainly through the use of enhanced computers to defend against limited missile attacks. A. A controller sits it the tactical display screen of a Patriot missile system engagement control station. Friday january 25, 1991,
