| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Weapons of Choice: The Development of Precision Guided Munitions. By Paul G. Gillespie. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006. xiv, 218 pp. $35.00, ISBN 978-0-8173-1532-0.)
Eliot Cohen, a professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, has compared the seductive lure of airpower for political leaders to modern courtship; both promise gratification without commitment. In Weapons of Choice, Paul G. Gillespie, an associate professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy, explains how the development of precision-guided bombs has helped create that image and offers some cautions about the resulting military policies.	1
The book is brief, only 178 pages of relatively large text, and some topics deserve more coverage. Readers will need to do their own research on the development of the precision-bombing doctrine before World War II that provided the inspiration for much of the strike technology developed since. Improvements during the Korean War in accuracy through beacon guidance, and experiments such as those with drone aircraft conducted by the U.S. Navy's Guided Missile Unit 90, are also neglected. After covering primitive cruise missiles, such as the Liberty Eagle in World War I and war-weary bombers in World War II, the author chose not to pursue their development any further, thereby neglecting an important part of America's precision strike capability.	. . .

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