Sailors take on deadly serious task of building smart bombs

ABOARD THE USS CONSTELLATION-Stacked four rows high and ten deep, hundreds of the world's most accurate bombs lie in the inner bunker of this aircraft carrier, ready to be dropped from fighter planes if war is declared against Iraq.

Gunner Joe Thompson, a former enlisted sailor who recently was awarded a naval officer commission, oversees 108 sailors who put together the bombs before they are loaded onto airplanes. "I can't say how many bombs we have, but I will say this: "It's a lot," says Thompson, who like rest of the ordnance handlers, is clad in a red turtleneck and Army-style camouflage pants.

Rear Adm. Barry Costello, commander of the Constellation Battle Group now operating in the Persian Gulf, told reporters here that highly accurate bombs would make for a "lightning quick" war against Iraq and would help eliminate damage to unintended civilian targets. He said the use of so-called "smart" bombs would be a key difference between a potential war with Iraq today and Operation Desert Storm in 1991.

Among the most accurate bombs is the Joint Direct Attack Munition, which was developed after the first Gulf War in response to concerns about the accuracy of the military's surface-to-air weapons. In Afghanistan, the JDAM won high marks for pinpointing its targets and its capacity to burrow into caves. On the eve of a second Gulf War, the warhead would likely be a popular choice for taking down Saddam Hussein.

Bombs don't arrive here ready to be dropped. Instead, they come in pieces in wooden crates. They are stored well below the water line, in the carrier's weapons magazine, about 10 decks underneath the flight deck where the F-14 and F-18 fighter planes that will carry them are launched. The lights are brighter and the temperature a few degrees cooler in the magazine than on the rest of the ship. On a white easel in the room, the "Bomb Build-Up Chart" tells which tail fins and fuses go with which bombs and how many need to be built each day. "I can build two or 2,000 bombs," says Thompson.

In the magazine's assembly area, eight-foot long 2,000-pound warheads, their insides filled with a 50-50 mix of explosive materials and concrete, await the technology that will turn them into smart bombs. A four-foot tail section includes a Global Positioning system, various fuse wires and data transmission gear for downloading targeting information from the plane. After the tail section and the warhead are pieced together, ordnance handlers use a small computer workstation to test the information systems. The whole process of building one of the military's most deadly accurate bombs takes less than 30 minutes.

After assembly, the bomb is raised to the flight deck on one of the magazine's industrial-size elevators, where it is stacked alongside other munitions in an area designated the "bomb farm." After being loaded on an aircraft, a JDAM may be carried for weeks without being launched. Some will never be dropped.

All bombs are numbered to track their age. Bombs can be disassembled and sent to other ships if not used. Several JDAMs have come to the Constellation from other ships. Some have messages, scribbled by sailors. "I pray that I might be dropped when in sight of Saddam's weapon pile," reads one. Messages are always a sign the bombs are from another vessel. The Constellation's skipper has banned sailors from writing on ordnance.

Petty Officer First Class Clayton Duncan builds the bombs seven days a week, often 16 hours a day. He has a wife, two young children and two Huskies at home in San Diego, and he says he tries not to think about the potentially deadly outcome of his handiwork.

"I don't sit here and think it's going to go blow up somebody. I just suppress it," says Duncan, comparing the way he leaves his work at the office to how he puts thoughts of his family back home out of his mind while at sea.