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Reprinted with permission
By Senior Airman Ryan
Hansen
Air Armament Center Public Affairs
As
the smoke begins to clear on Operation Iraqi Freedom, the
Department of Defense continues to collect data on how well
the U.S. military, and its arsenal of weapons, performed during
combat operations.
One
weapon the DoD does not have to research is the CBU-105, better
known as the Sensor Fuzed Weapon. The SFW, which falls under
the Area Attack System Program Office here at Eglin, made
its combat debut during OIF, and its report card was returned
immediately after it was employed.
The SFW is
a 1,000-pound class weapon containing sensor-fused submuntions
for attacking armor. It is designed to engage, disrupt or
even stop an adversary's main armored force, while providing
time for other friendly forces to reinforce the area.
On April 1, a B-52 Stratofortress
crew deployed in support of OIF from the 20th Bomb Squadron
at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., took to the air for one
of its regular 17 hour-plus combat sorties.
After taking care of an ammunition
dump in the northeastern part of Baghdad, the aircrew got
a call for help from a Marine division that was being threatened
by a large Iraqi tank column. A situation like that is exactly
what the SFW was designed for. So the aircrew maneuvered the
BUFF to the southeastern part of Baghdad where the confrontation
was about to take place, received the target coordinates from
the Marines on the ground, programmed two CBU-105s for their
combat debut and got the approval for release.
"Those two weapons decimated,
stopped dead, the entire tank column by killing the whole
first one-third to half of it," said Lt. Col. Chris Stockton,
aircraft commander on the flight. "The first thing we
heard back from the Marines was, 'holy (crap).' That is exactly
what you want to hear on the radio from the guy you are supporting."
But, the full effects of the SFW were
not yet done being felt. As the rest of the Iraqi tank column
saw what happened to their comrades, they decided they wanted
no part of combat on that particular day.
"All they see is their boss' tanks
start blowing up within the space of a couple seconds,"
Stockton said. "After that, the remaining two thirds
of the tank column immediately surrendered and poured out
of their tanks."
So instead of having to possibly face
combat against an entire tank column, the Marines simply had
to round-up Iraqi prisoners who felt overmatched against the
SFW.
As news of the CBU-105's tremendous
combat debut spread back to the states, members of the Area
Attack SPO and the designers of the weapon at Textron Systems
in Wilmington, Ma., were overjoyed.
"A lot of people have spent many,
many years on this," said Col. James Knox, Area Attack
SPO director. "And the reason it works is because those
people poured their lives, expertise, creativity and excellence
into their job everyday to make sure this weapon is the most
fearsome tank killer we have."
Work on the SFW began back in 1992
with full-scale production beginning in 1996. Textron dropped
the weapon 120 times before approving it for combat use.
"To see this moment actually occur
kind of takes us full circle," said Steve Sojda, Textron
Systems. "It's a tremendous moment for us. SFW has come
through a lot of years and a lot of milestones, but this one
is going to be a little bit hard to top as we move through
time."
Now that the weapon has proved itself
in a combat environment, the possibilities are endless. Currently,
the SFW can only be carried by the B-52 and F-16, but that
will soon change as its popularity grows.
"I hope we see a lot more use
of the Sensor Fuzed Weapon in environments where it's suitable,"
Stockton said. "It did what it was supposed to do, as
advertised."
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