Robbin Laird's Second Line of Defense blog has a fantastic interview with the ">Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) program office. Laird, a well-connected military analyst and writer, found out the Increment 1 SDB hasn't been used in Afghanistan and Iraq for nearly three years. The US Air Force has instead developed a new version of the Increment 1 munition to make the SDB useful in close air support operations. [Read full interview.]
"Lt Col Kato: First of all, some of the operations weren't in urban environments where low collateral damage mattered. In fact, some of the missions needed a bigger boom, so 500 and 2,000-lb JDAMs were better weapons of choice for the targets that they were prosecuting.
Secondly, because it's designed as a stand-off weapon, it takes a long time to get there because the way it was developed is that it was intended to maximize its glide slope so that it could get the maximum range.
And there was the question of time to target. The pilot says, "Okay, released." And the guy on the ground says, "Okay, how long?" And he says, "Four and a half minutes." And the guy says, "What?" In a CAS fight, that's not good, that's not the best option if you're the guy on the ground having to clear air space while troops are likely in contact with the enemy for that long.
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