Another short-notice attempt to kill Iraq's leadership, using a B-1 out of Oman, was an early success for the nascent network-centric system of warfighting being introduced by the U.S. Within 12 min. of its assignment, the crew dropped four GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs)―two penetrators and two with 25-millisecond delayed action fuzes―on two aim points about 100 ft. apart in a residential area of Baghdad. The rapid response time was the result of integrated intelligence and command and control, but also because the U.S. Air Force has kept a rotation of B-1s on orbit around-the-clock, each with a payload of 24 1-ton bombs.
展开▼
