Firing hundreds of KM in some cases, accurate within a few hundred feet? How is that possible? And how do they “dial in” new coordinates exactly? It all seems like magic to me
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Excellent answers so far. Here is a simplification, how this might evolve.
You can imagine you are throwing a ball. If you throw a ball often enough, through experience you will get better at it. You can somewhat predict where the ball will land. It’s even better, if you practice the same throw over and over again.
It would get even better, if you built a machine to throw the ball. If the machine throws the ball the same way it did last time, you will get the same result. (Except for windspeed).
Then you can test the machine with different configurations. You try different angels and speeds, until you hit, let’s say exactly 10 meters away. You write that configuration down.
Now whenever you want to hit something 10 meters away with that machine, you look it up.
If you were bored and had lot’s of time, you could save configurations for every spot you might want to hit.
And then we have math. Math is great 😀 Instead of testing all of this, you can only test let’s say 3 spots. Then you take the angels and speeds and locations, and you put them into a formula, that can be solved for the location, if you have speed and angle. If with your formula, you can predict and confirm a 4th and 5th spot, you have done it.
With that formula you can now predict the location you will hit, if you have speed and angle.
And then you get computers to math for you, and you have lasers that can measure distance, and gps and coordinates, and again computers that take all of these infos into account in realtime. And then you just have to point a laser at whatever you want to be blown up, and a bombardment will hit it.
And then you have smart ammunition, where the bomb itself has a computer, and can steer. Basically a self driving flying car, with explosives.
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