A recent congressional blue-ribbon commission is warning that the U.S. military is in danger of losing its "precision dominance," the strategic capability to guide weapons to targets with extreme accuracy.
The Independent Review Commission, a congressionally-mandated group of experts, states in its report to Congress July 29 that U.S. leadership in precision guided weapons has been unrivaled for several decades.
"That competitive advantage has yielded benefits on the battlefield since the Vietnam War, but particularly beginning with the 1991 Gulf War," the report said. "The ability to conduct precision warfare is rapidly diffusing, however, and it seems likely that the next adversary that the United States faces will be armed with precision weaponry, whether that adversary is a state or not."
The panel headed by former White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and former Defense Secretary William Perry, stated that it believes the Pentagon "has not sufficiently integrated this likelihood into its operational concepts and plans."
China and Russia are both developing advanced precision guided weapons. China's newest weapons are its anti-ship ballistic missile, which has mastered the capability of a ballistic warhead moving at very high speeds in space returning into the atmosphere and maneuvering to strike a ship at sea. China's new direct ascent anti-satellite missile also requires high precision to leave the atmosphere and guide a warhead to a relatively small and fast moving satellite.
Russia also is developing a hypersonic warhead that would travel in space and then glide back to targets on earth using difficult maneuvering techniques.
