Ammunition and Bombs

Guided munitions have revolutionized the defense market since the 1990s through "JDAM-fication" — a dumb gravity bomb is turned into a guided weapon by adding a GPS/INS tail kit. JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) is the archetype: a Mk-82/83/84 dumb bomb gets a conversion kit of ~USD 25,000 added on and becomes a precision weapon with CEP <13 m. Newer are glide bombs (SDB I/II, Storm Shadow derivatives) with a glider silhouette and standoff range out to 110 km. At the opposite end: dumb cluster munitions and thermobaric FAB bombs are used by both sides in the Ukraine conflict — their moral and legal status varies by caliber and treaty regime. A key insight is that modern munitions are increasingly glide-kit-equipped (Russian FAB with UMPK kit in response to Western JDAM-ER), while GPS jamming and spoofing in Ukraine have lowered the actual effectiveness of GPS-only guidance. That is why the latest rounds (M982 Excalibur S, GPS anti-jam JDAM, GBU-53/B StormBreaker) are shifting to multi-mode seekers with IIR + millimeter-wave radar + GPS that work independently even without GNSS.