SPICE-2000: Know All About The Smart Bomb Indian Air Force Used For Balakot Airstrike

After they separated from the underbellies of Mirage 2000 fighter jets flying deep inside Pakistan, the bombs “glided”. They kept gliding as a memory chip affixed to the bombs guided them to their targets – a terrorist camp near Balakot in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

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The bombs “hit” the targets as planned, confirmed the Indian Air Force. The extent of damage and the amount of casualties remains unclear. There has also been speculation over whether the Indian Air Force Mirage 2000 jets even managed to hit their targets.

It will likely take a while for the fog over the Balakot airstrike to clear. But what is clear is the fact that the Indian Force used highly accurate ‘smart bombs’ to carry out its daring raid, the first such airstrike in Pakistan in decades.

It’s been widely reported that the Indian Air Force Mirage 2000 jets used SPICE-2000 bombs during the mission to destroy Jaish-e-Mohammad’s Balakot terrorist training camp.

Well, it turns out that the SPICE-2000 is not a bomb at all. It in fact is a ‘guidance kit’ that is attached to a standard warhead or bomb. In this case, the actual bombs used during the February 26 Balakot bombing were likely Indian-made warheads manufactured by one our ordnance factories.

What the SPICE-2000 did was turn the bomb into a smart device with the ability to glide in the air and make minor adjustments to precisely hit its target. We’ll explain how.

SPICE, manufactured by the Israeli defence technology company Rafael, is short for ‘Smart, Precise-Impact and Cost-Effective’. The SPICE guidance kit consists of two pieces — one is attached to the bomb’s head and the other is attached at the end.

The first piece has a camera located at its tip (we’ll explain why later) while the second piece is essentially a fin allowing a bomb outfitted with SPICE-2000 to glide.

Now, before a mission, an elaborate mission plan is readied on ground. Once the target is decided, air force personnel feed all kinds of data into a memory chip. The data includes GPS coordinates of the target, satellite images of the target, information about the land around the target and the angle at which the bomb should strike the target.

The two SPICE-2000 pieces are then attached to a bomb and the memory chip is inserted into the SPICE kit. Fighter jets carrying the SPICE-2000 ‘smart bombs’ then take off for the mission.

Once the fighter jets reach a pre-determined location and height, they drop these smart bombs. The SPICE-2000’s onboard computer then takes over and uses the data stored in the memory chip to glide the bomb towards the target.

How does it do so? Remember that camera we told you about earlier? Well, the camera takes live images of what is in front of the bomb.

These images are cross-referenced with the data stored on the memory chip.

So for example, if the bomb is headed towards a building with a red roof but the data on the memory chip says the target has a blue roof, then the SPICE-2000’s computer will make adjustments to the flight path to correct the bomb’s heading.

The SPICE-2000 does so with the help of what maker Rafael calls a “unique scene-matching algorithm”.

So, essentially the SPICE-2000 dramatically increases the probability of a successful and accurate ‘hit’ and makes a fighter pilot’s life a whole lot easier.

So, did the Indian Air Force accurately hit buildings at Jaish’s largest terror camp? Chances are high. After all, the SPICE-2000 maker has made an impressive claim: Bombs outfitted with the kit have an accuracy rate of just three meters.

That, by the way, is less than the space between your home’s floor and roof.

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Source: IT

Image Courtesy: ET

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