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5 Weapons Systems to Reduce Collateral Damage
In the early days of the coalition air war over Libya, finding and destroying ground vehicles was easy because they were moving through the open desert. As the campaign progressed, Muammar Gaddafi's forces nestled closer to citiesand civilian buildingsto gain protection. Tactics like these in Iraq and Afghanistan have crated a boom industry in weapons that can strike targets without causing collateral damage. Technology has come a long way, and these are five of the best weapon technologies to do it. But the fact is air strikes will always come with a price.
![collateral-damage-02-0411-md.jpg](/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.popularmechanics.com%2Fcm%2Fpopularmechanics%2Fimages%2F1m%2Fcollateral-damage-02-0411-md.jpg&hash=e74799aee77fc7b650b0e72c2bfa177f)
GBU-39B Focused Lethality Munition
Weight: 250 pounds
Status: In service
Rather than a steel casing that hurls deadly fragments several hundred feet in each direction, the FLM has a carbon-fiber casing that disintegrates into harmless dust. In addition, the explosive filler is mixed with small tungsten particles that slow down rapidly due to air friction. This creates a concentrated zone of destruction just a few meters across, with little damage outside that radius.
The FLMone version of what's called a small diameter bomb (SDB)was first used in Iraq in 2006. "An SDB or SDBs can take out a critical section of a building, not necessarily the entire structure," says Gary Rodenberg, the program manager for Boeing's SDB division. "For example, just the radio room or a satellite dish in a communications facility, or perhaps a military jet in a hardened hangar that was intentionally co-located in a civilian airport." The weapon's smaller size is also an advantage. "SDB offers war fighters tremendous flexibility on today's ever-changing battlefields," he says. "Each SDB carriage on an aircraft's load-out allows the pilot to quadruple the number of surgical strikes they can conduct on each sortie."