Post by Globexanter on Sept 7, 2011 6:35:49 GMT -5
Well. AS Surdra pointed out, the majority of the U.S. arsenal's bombs are in fact unguided because they are cheaper and easier to mass produce. I believe the Mk 84 is the current General Purpose bomb and the unit cost is $3100.
As to intel, you can never have enough information about an enemy commander. However, even if you know everything, other variables may come into play that can change things. And my statement presupposed that the competent commander to whom I referred had access to accurate, real time intelligence.
In the Pearl Harbor attack, the U.S. could read the Japanese encrypted communiqués almost as fast as the Japanese could send them. The U.S. knew the Japanese were going to attack, but they discounted an atack at Pearl because they thought a torpedo attack was not feasible due to Pearl's shallow waters.
The Japanese had studied Britain's attack on Taranto Harbor in Italy, and adapted their torpedoes for Pearl's depth. So eventhough the U.S. had good intel, they reacted too slowly because of their own shortsightedness.
But as you said, apart from Carpet Bombing, the use of gravity bombs (apart from if you want to flatten an enemy city, not much use in doing that nowadays) has massively fell. As I noted above, single targets which would once require hundred of gravity bombs to "hope" to destroy it entirely can now be utterly destroyed with the use of one single missile. This missile can be fired a long way away from the target from anything ranging from a missile battery or a navy ship with the required missile in it's arsenal.
Using a ship deletes the chance that the enemy might intercept a big fat lumbering aircraft.
Well for a start you would practically need to infiltrate the enemy base then send the information back home without the enemy finding out what is going on, which is hard enough for a start.
But nowadays it is not as hard as it once was to spy upon an enemy airbase (i.e.: Satellites, etc...). So if the defending Commander is from a rich country, he will be most likely informed that the enemy has long range bombers, B-52s.