Computer-controlled munitions. Smart weapons include precision-guided bombs that have great accuracy, smart bullets that can change their trajectory and smart land mines that deactivate at a certain time. Advanced technology offers the military more clever ways of killing the enemy, while some of the methods are designed to eliminate or lessen collateral damage. The term may also refer to smart guns that work only for their owner. See
smart gun and
UAV.
Send a Drone; Get the GPS Data
Today's weapons are a far cry from the ones used in previous battles. For example, a drone can be fed the aerial image of an enemy's tank or rocket launcher. When the drone, which increasingly uses AI pattern recognition, is sent into enemy territory, it looks for a matching target on the ground. When found, it returns home and transmits the exact GPS coordinates of the target to a missile that, when fired, hits the target directly.
Swarms of Drones
Never before have so many unmanned aerial weapons been used in combat. In the Ukraine-Russia war, drones are deployed by Russia in huge swarms that overwhelm Ukraine's defenses. Ukraine has also been effective using drones such as in the GPS example above. However, not only are the AI-enabled weapons more capable, but thousands can be built very quickly compared to previous war machines.
Since most things in life offer good and bad results, there is a plus in the Ukraine-Russia war for American weapons manufacturers. For the past several years, they have been able to test new drones in real combat, something that cannot be duplicated in a drawing room. When problems are found, improvements are made, and this live battleground cannot be simulated with the same effectiveness on a computer.
Personalized Weaponry
Hand-sized drones can be fed facial images of targeted people. Carrying an explosive no heavier than three grams, the drone can fly directly to a person's skull and deliver the payload. Such drones can also be given generic facial parameters, and thousands can be released from a plane, each killing one person in the vicinity on the ground.