It’s difficult enough for one ship to find and sink another ship. It may not be quite as hard for planes flying from an aircraft carrier to find enemy ships and sink them, but it’s not easy. The hardest task for a plane — especially a land-based plane — may be to find a small boat and sink it while it’s moving.
But that’s just what one of America’s B-1B bombers accomplished earlier this month.
“Future wars might not all be on land, some may include surface combat, so we are evaluating the way we employ the B-1 to aid in completing the mission,” Lt. Col. Alejandro Gomez, 337th TES special projects officer said in an official Air Force news story about the test.
Flying over the Gulf of Mexico with a host of fighters and bombers, the B-1B dropped six munitions: a laser-guided 500-pound bomb (a GBU-54), as well as several 500- and 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), and at least one GBU-10 Paveway II.
That Paveway accomplished what may be the most remarkable part of the test: striking and completely destroying a fast-moving small boat.
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