Weapons
Introduction
INTRODUCTION
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
Military aircraft are designed to destroy an enemy’s potential to wage war. The primary means to
accomplish this mission is by delivering various types of ordnance upon enemy personnel, equip-
ment, and installations. Accurate delivery of ordnance on surface targets is one of the primary
missions of naval aviation and is accomplished with a wide variety of special and conventional
weapons. Delivery techniques vary as widely as the weapons themselves, and vary from conven-
tional dives of all angles to computer-integrated loft maneuvers. To be a true professional, you - the
Naval Aviator - must be thoroughly versed in air-to-ground delivery.
OBJECTIVE
The primary objective of the Weapons stage is to develop your basic skills of weapons delivery. The
most important of these skills involves two concepts - rolling in and tracking. You will find that the
basic skills you already learned, such as formation flying and instrument scan, will be helpful in the
weapons delivery stage. The ultimate objective is to teach you how to make the ordnance hit the
t.arget. This publication will emphasize the fundamentals of weapons delivery and their application to
various types of practice ordnance. The procedures contained here, except those labeled “tech-
niques” must be closely followed. For Training Command purposes, the most important aspect of
weapons delivery is consistency in roll-in and tracking. Diversification can come later, after building
basic skills.
GRADING
Because accuracy of delivery is the goal of weapons training, it will be graded on all but the first few
flights. You will determine accuracy by figuring the Circular Error Probability (CEP). The CEP is a
statistical median, and is theoretically the radius of a circle within which half the pilot’s bombs could
be expected to fall. Figure your CEP by arranging your hits from best to worst; the CEP is the middle
hit of an odd number of drops or the average of the middle two hits of an even number of drops.
Count off-target hits of unknown distance as 500 feet. Four drops are required to compute a CEP
and complete a flight. All scored hits will count toward the flight CEP, regardless of the pattern in
which the individual bombs were dropped. Accuracy will be graded in accordance with the guidelines
found in the applicable master curriculum guide (MCG).
(4-03) Original
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