TO BE MORE PRECISE

Between 10 and 15 March 1922, DH9 light bombers from 1 Squadron South African Air Force (SAAF) trundled into the skies for dozens of bombing and reconnaissance missions over central Johannesburg, Benoni, and Brakpan to help put down the Rand Rebellion. What began as a strike by miners had turned into a full-blown revolt as heavily-armed rebels held 20 000 troops of the South African Army at bay for almost a week.

WHILE 1 SQUADRON performed well, particularly in forcing rebels from trenches dug in Fordsburg Square during the momentous battle there on 15 March, the operation was far from untroubled.

First, on 11 March, the SAAF inadvertently killed a civilian, Mrs Truter, in Benoni when a wayward bomb landed next to her house instead of the intended target. Later, during the fighting at Fordsburg, one of the bombs intended for the trenches on the square hit a nearby church instead, damaging its steeple. Neither was easily avoidable: The DH9 was a primitive bomber by today’s standards, with its bombs stored tail-up in an internal bay resulting in wild swings as they entered the slipstream and only a simple negative lens sight to aid the pilot in knowing when to release them. 1 Squadron had also lost two pilots and two aircraft to ground fire, as a result of being forced to fly low level to maintain a reasonable level of accuracy during attack runs.

But it was perhaps a foreshadowing moment for the SAAF that its first combat action, a mere two years after its founding, involved both the bombing of civilians-turned-rebels in the heart of Johannesburg and the accidental killing of civilian bystanders.

It was an early and painful lesson for the young service, and a harbinger of a future where bombing targets have become ever more integrated into civilian urban areas, not easily distinguishable from surrounding civilians, and where the risk of collateral damage remains both high and extremely damaging to a war effort.

Decades later, during combat operations in Angola, the SAAF was again faced with the limitations of ‘dumb’ unguided munitions and frustrated time and again by their poor accuracy when attacking critical FAPLA and SWAPO camps bases. Especially when flying low-level ‘long toss’ bombing profiles necessitated by Cuban and Angolan air defence patrols.

No matter what was done to improve the accuracy of aircraft navigation systems and bomb computers, there were still too many mission failures because of bombs missing the intended target. Over those distances, wind gusts, minor manufacturing differences on each bomb, and other seemingly small factors could still be enough to cause wide miss distances under combat conditions. At the same time, it had to deal with changed international attitudes towards indiscriminate bombing and the protection of civilians, and had to carefully plan missions or even scrub some entirely to avoid civilian casualties where possible.

The SAAF therefore reached a point where, like the USAF had in Vietnam, it had to accept that the only way to improve the precision and accuracy of its bombing any further and achieve its combat aims was to make bombs themselves ‘smart’ by attaching guidance kits and control surfaces. As a result, South Africa invested serious resources into precision guided munitions (PGMs), becoming one of the world’s earliest adopters of the technology in combat and a leader in guided air-to-ground systems in general.

The first real product of this research was the 1000 kg TV-guided H2 glide bomb developed in the mid1980s under Project Hanto and used in combat on 12 December 1987 when Buccaneer 414 dropped it against a crucial bridge at Cuito Cuanavale in Angola. The first attack was unsuccessful, which isn’t unusual for a novel weapons system, but a follow up mission on 3 January 1988 succeeded in destroying the bridge. The war in Angola ended before the H2 could be used further, though it did see additional use as the host platform for South Africa’s air-launched nuclear bombs.

The H2 was soon renamed the Raptor I and remained in SAAF service until 1990, when the service retired it in the face of budget cuts and a decision to rely on Israeli-supplied Griffin laser-guided bomb (LGB) kits for its near-term precision bombing needs.

Denel's Raptor smart bomb is the current evolution of the H2 bomb and is in service with Algeria and Pakistan.

Denel exported the Raptor I to Pakistan and other countries, and later introduced the significantly upgraded Raptor II which featured GNSS/INS and IR with target recognition as seeker options and a rocket booster motor to take the range from 60 km to over 120 km. Accuracy was enhanced, resulting in a circular error probable (CEP) of just 3 metres, and it was successfully exported to a number of countries including Algeria and Pakistan. Denel more recently revealed the Raptor III, a low-observable further development of the platform that takes the range up to 300 km, but was unable to interest any customers in funding final development.

In the 1990s the SAAF and Denel invested in a number of follow-on precision weapons projects, beginning with the turbojet-powered 150 km+ range MUPSOW (MUlti-Purpose, Stand-Off Weapon) technology demonstrator project that kicked off in 1991 and was first test-flown in 1997 after a protracted ground test phase. After proving the basic concepts, Denel launched the follow-on 300 km range Torgos at the 1999 Dubai defence exhibition. Both MUPSOW and Torgos featured multiple guidance options including Man-in-the-loop (MITL) TV guidance via an onboard datalink and IR guidance with automatic target recognition resulting in a claimed CEP of 2 metres. Denel never officially admitted to selling any Torgos systems, but it’s widely believed that Pakistan’s Ra’am stand off weapon is a licenceproduced derivative of it.

In 2000 Sagem subcontracted Denel to design and develop the Armement Air-Sol Modulaire (AASM) ‘Hammer’ precision-guided bomb for the French Air Force under Project Green. It was a difficult and challenging project at first, especially as Denel at the time had exported the little experience with developing PGMs as modular kits that could Raptor I to be fitted to regular Mk81, Mk82, Mk83, and Mk84 bombs, but the company pulled it off in the end and the AASM is now the primary guided bomb in French service.

The SAAF wanted to retain the expertise gained within the industry during the AASM project, so in the mid-2000s it provided Denel with funding to develop a similar modular bomb kit that ultimately became the Umbani. But by then the SAAF lacked the funding to acquire the Umbani or integrate it onto its newly-arrived Gripens, so Denel was encouraged to look elsewhere for further investment. The UAE, looking to build up its local defence industry, was an obvious candidate and in 2012 the Emirati Tawazun Group (later EDGE) created a joint venture with Denel Dynamics to produce the GNSS/INS/IIR-guided Umbani, now renamed the Al Tariq. That joint venture remains active today and Emirati-built Al Tariqs have been seen in service with the UAE Air Force and Egyptian Air Force.

All well and good for Denel, at least up until it spiralled into its current crisis as a result of state capture, but the SAAF’s inability to acquire any of these products of local industry presented a problem of its own. All it was able to fund in terms of precision strike options for its Gripens was a small number of US Paveway II laser-guided bomb kits, which are both costly and slow to replace and not suitable for all weather conditions like an Al Tariq. Its fleet of Hawks which are intended to have a secondary strike capability have no precision munitions at all, despite being cleared to carry the Al Tariq. In any combat operations it will run out of Paveways almost immediately and be forced to resort to unguided bombs only, just as it did before 1988, with all the attendant problems of inaccuracy leading to poor mission performance and potential civilian casualties.

In World War II there was a debate between the advocates of precision bombing and area bombing. Some, especially the ‘Bomber Mafia’ of the US Army Air Force, believed that with the introduction of the Norden bombsight it was finally possible for bombers to hit targets such as factories, rail yards, bridges, and other strategic infrastructure with pinpoint accuracy, therefore avoiding unnecessary civilian deaths and, as they claimed, shortening the war by picking out and destroying Germany and Japan’s key infrastructure. Their opponents, mostly in the Royal Air Force, believed that precision bombing was not yet possible with the technology available at the time and that less discriminate area bombing would have a greater effect both by destroying large amounts of industry at a time and demoralising German and Japanese civilians.

Ultimately neither was entirely correct. The advocates of area bombing were right about precision bombing being unfeasible: The Norden bombsight was overrated and USAAF aircraft never achieved anything close to the level of accuracy needed to make the approach effective. As a result, even the USAAF switched to area bombing later in the war. But the British were wrong about area bombing working to demoralise civilians, proving conclusively that wars could not be won by terrorising populations from the air. Thanks to public revulsion over the mass civilian casualties that resulted, it also solidified the prohibitions against intentionally targeting civilians in war, especially from the air.

With South African special operations forces deploying into northern Mozambique as I write this, and the very real possibility that the SADC force they’re part of will turn into a full brigade supported by combat aircraft by the end of the year, South Africa’s leaders no longer have any excuse for ignoring the need for precision weapons to achieve mission objectives & protect troops. Worse than that, though, they are also morally culpable for not providing the SAAF with sufficient means to use PGMs to prevent civilian casualties when hitting military targets.

It’s time we treated this as the failure it is and held those making the decisions accountable.

The Norden bombsight was supposed to make precision bombing possible.