Talk:Precision-guided munition

message: "...weapons intended to maximize damage to the target while THEORETICALLY minimizing collateral damage." 
I think that the use of "theoretically" in this context is redundant and bordering on non-NPOV.  It is redundant because it is already stated that these are "intended" traits.  We could go even further and just define "precision-guided munition" as "weapons that maximize damage to the target while minimizing collateral damage", then we could discuss to what extent existing weapons fit that definition.
While I'm no expert on the topic, I think that existing weapons (laser guided bombs, for example) do fit that definition without any qualifiers (such as "intended" or "theoretically").  The important point is that they minimize collateral damage RELATIVE to the intended damage.  This does not mean that they reduce overall collateral damage.
Finally, there should probably be some note about how these traits are relative to the expense or risk to the attacker.  An assasins knife could be considered "precision guided" just because there is little chance of a random person being killed by such a weapon.  However, the assasin needs to be highly trained and needs to take great risks to use it in such a precise way.
 adam
: The collateral damage aspect was mostly for civilians and pretty irrelevant till few years ago. The key problem was at first that some targets (sturdy bridges, battleships) could only be hit effectively enough by very large bombs. The bombers couldn't carry many such bombs, and unguided ones had a marginal hit probability. The end result was that sometimes a whole bomber wing bombed a bridge and didn't destroy it. Guided bombs did better - a detachment of four bombers could attack the same bridge and destroy it. That was an enormous leap in capability against suitable targets - and it was even cheaper than dumb bombs. Pretty much the same had been done with dive-bombers before, but dive-bombing required a very strong airframe, became increasingly difficult as aircraft became faster and it was only accurate if the aircraft dived low enough to be in range of light anti-air weapons. Btw, there's no mention fo "collateral" in the whole article by now. Somebody seems to have edited that already.Lastdingo (talk) 15:30, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  adam's complaint 

message: Rebelguys2 - you just deleted the three most detailed technical tutorials on this subject matter available on the web.
*Guided and Unguided Weapons  	 
*Laser Guidance 	 
*GPS Guided Weapons - Parts I-V
This is material which is entirely consistent with WP guidelines and I would like you to reinstate it.
Incidently I did not post these links and received a complaint about your deletion.
Ckopp 14:04, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  inappropriate deletion of appropriate links 

message: Someone should put in that PGM also increase the likelihood of damage being done to the object being targetted, making them more effective weapons.  Stargoat 16:56, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: It says that twice in the first paragraph - directly in the first sentence, and by implication in the second. Securiger 06:41, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  increased damage 

message: I felt that this paragraph was nonsense, and removed it:
:Ironically, despite the greater precision of precision-guided weapons, the failure of their guidance systems can cause greater damage than a miss from an ordinary bomb. Misses from older, unguided munitions are generally normally distributed around the aim point. Thus it can be assumed that the further you are from the target, the safer you are. On the other hand, most smart bomb misses are caused by system failures—a jammed steering fin, computer failure, loss of homing signal, etc. In this case, the weapon is actually more likely to miss the target by a very large distance, than by a small distance.
This seems like pure speculation and unless someone can cite examples or a credible source that makes a statement to this effect, this should stay out. The attempt to invoke some kind of probabilistic argument is particularly ill-advised. --Mike Lin 19:45, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  misses 

message: This article suggests that PGMs are purely an American enterprise, which is simply not true. It needs a broader perspective on non-U.S. efforts, which I'll try to add in the next week or so.
ArgentLA 21:03, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How about adding a history section, including German Ruhrstahl SD 1400 and like?  Talamus 20:14, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Absolutely. Also the Henshels & Fritz X, as well as (American...) Felix & GB-8.  Trekphiler 12:38, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  There were at least German, U.S. and Japanese guided weapons in WW2, in that order of relevance. Btw, the first guided weapons that I know about were prototypes of anti-ship torpedo gliders in WWI, developed for the German Zeppelins. I have a photocopy with text & photos about that.Lastdingo (talk) 01:55, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too much U.S. emphasis 

message: "The United States Army began experimenting with radio-controlled remotely guided planes in the First World War, but the program had few successes (see Operation Aphrodite)" - know little to nothing of the subject, but according to the Operation Aphrodite entry, it was purely within WW2. Is the sentance incorrect, or is there are more appropriate entry to cite?
:Less "Misleading" than " misreading": the U.S., along with Britain, did experiment with RC in WW1 & interwar; Aphrodite was entirely WW2, but wasn't connected (directly) to previous work. See (for instance) A J P Taylor's Jane's book of RPVs.  Trekphiler 05:40, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Misleading sentance in second paragraph 

message: In the aforementioned film, interviewees state (I'm paraphrasing here) that there is "no such thing as a smart bomb", and that weapons manufacturers attribute a degree of precision to their munitions which is unrealistic and difficult to attain. Now, putting ourselves above any anti-american or anti-war sentiments; is there any truth to this? The article provides many explanations for what might cause deviations from high precision; but how often do these deviations happen? How often does the GPS signal get jammed, causing JDAMs etc. to need to revert to inertial guidance? Reading the following sentence, from "Satellite-Guided": "However, if the targeting information is accurate, satellite-guided weapons are significantly more likely to achieve a successful strike in any given weather conditions than any other type of precision-guided munition."? I'm curious as to what actually constitutes a successful strike. These questions are all born out of curiosity, which was piqued by the documentary. Any thoughts on the actual relative smartness of smart bombs, in all cases and not only ideal/exceptional ones?AniRaptor2001 (talk) 04:30, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The CEP (circular error probability) is only true for munitions that worked. Guidance duds can impact a long distance away without influence on the theoretical CEP value. "Successful strike" has more to do with the weapons effects and not only with its accuracy error. Lastdingo (talk) 01:50, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Views Expressed in ''[[Why We Fight (2005 film)]]''

message: Several guided bombs and guided glide bombs were wire-guided, and this should be mentioned.  Lastdingo (talk) 01:55, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, in particular X-4 & X-7.  TREKphiler hit me ♠  05:21, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Laser beam riding, semi-active radar homing and fiber-optical guidance are not mentioned as well. None is in air/ground use, though. Lastdingo (talk) 15:35, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  forgotten guidance: wire-guided 

message: Judging by the introduction, this article seems to be about guided air-to-ground munitions. It is doubtful whether ATGMs (even helicopter-based ATGMs) fit into this category well, as air/ground weaponry of non-helicopter aircraft is usually discussed separately of helicopter arms (which often happen to be a mix of aircraft and ground system munitions). It would be good to clarify the scope of this article to air-to-ground precision guided munitions or to expand it to PGMs in general. PGMs are also in use by tanks, mortars, rocket launchers, howitzers, ship cannons - even all modern torpedoes could be (mis)understood as PGMs.Lastdingo (talk) 15:41, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  scope of the article 

message: I wrote a blog article about guided munition history, maybe it is helpful if someone wants to write about history in this article: http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2009/02/precision-munitions-history.html  Lastdingo (talk) 01:42, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  history 

message: Just wondering why there's no mentioning of PGM's such as the Krasnopol (Weapon)
Victory in Germany (talk) 07:58, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  No mention of Russian precision-guided munitions? 

message: I wonder if it was really necessary to have created Guided bomb with text copied from this article. I mean, this article (size: 16k) and Guided bomb (size: 13k) have almost the same content and wording, i don't see the logic of having separate articles. EuTugamsg 18:08, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why split into [[Guided bomb]]? 

message: This article is a more than a little bit riddled with weasel words. Lets try and steer this article away from terms like "The Germans" and instead actually research who invented or pioneered or implicated a technology.Aryeonos (talk) 06:49, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weasel words and the like 

message: The advent of precision-guided munitions resulted in the renaming of older bombs as "gravity bombs", "dumb bombs", or "iron bombs".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retronym  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blix1ms0ns (talk • contribs) 01:29, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is there anyway of sticking retronym into this sentence?  

message: I check pages listed in :Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of :Precision-guided munition's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.
Reference named "janes":
From FN-6: 
From Griffin LGB: 
From Seirina Guided Bomb: 
I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 00:53, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orphaned references in [[:Precision-guided munition]]