▶
How Smart Bombs Enable Dumb Wars
The Paveway bomb, invented by Texas Instruments in the 1970s, was the first truly precise munition. It revolutionized America’s air campaign in Vietnam and allowed whole new kinds of “limited” U.S. wars in Libya, Iraq, Serbia, and beyond.
But Paveway’s true legacy was psychological: it seduced generations of U.S. leaders into believing that tactical precision creates strategic victories with few costs.
Jeffrey E. Stern, an intrepid chronicler of modern conflict, tells this story in his new book The Warhead: The Quest to Build the Perfect Weapon in the Age of Modern Warfare. He joins Jon Bateman on The World Unpacked to explore the past, present, and future of precision warfare.
Find the episode transcript and streaming audio, and get the show direct to your inbox, here: http://carnegieendowment.org/podcasts/the-world-unpacked/how-smart-bombs-enable-dumb-wars?
Follow Jon on X: https://x.com/JonKBateman
Chapters
00:00 – When Bombs Got Accurate
00:27 – The Intelligence Problem
00:57 – Welcome Jeff Stern
01:00 – The Weapon That Changed War
01:52 – Yemen: The Beginning
03:08 – Touching Bomb Shrapnel
05:01 – What Is a Smart Bomb?
06:38 – Vietnam’s Impossible Bridge
08:54 – The Illusion of Precision
10:19 – Winning Battles, Losing Wars
12:24 – Presidents With More Options
14:29 – Can Precision Stop Iran?
15:56 – Precision Depends on Intel
17:11 – Gaza and Mass Destruction
18:28 – When Pilots Decide to Kill
20:41 – Serbia: Precision Success?
23:05 – Shock and Awe Culture
24:45 – Libya’s Cautionary Tale
26:43 – Breaking vs. Rebuilding States
28:42 – Killing Leaders to Win
31:23 – The Catharsis of Airstrikes
32:21 – “With Love From Manchester”
33:48 – Where Does This End?
39:19 – Should These Weapons Exist?
44:58 – Final Reflections
Like and subscribe to our channel: https://bit.ly/38sljlH
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace generates strategic ideas and independent analysis, supports diplomacy, and trains the next generation of international scholar-practitioners to help countries and institutions take on the most difficult global problems and advance peace.
Visit our website: https://carnegieendowment.org/
Follow us on X: https://x.com/CarnegieEndow
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carnegieendow/
