Aerial bomb that finds its target without GPS: how the war changed the Israeli Air Force

Since the start of the war, the Israeli Air Force has increased the number of precision-guided munitions per sortie from four to 16, thanks to the accelerated deployment of SPICE 250. The article describes the evolution of the SPICE family of guided aerial bombs by RAFAEL, their electro-optical guidance technology, ability to operate under GPS jamming, and AI-based automatic target recognition functions.

Since the start of the war, the Israeli Air Force has sharply increased the number of precision-guided munitions a single aircraft can use per sortie, from four to 16. This became possible thanks to the accelerated deployment of SPICE 250, the smallest model in the SPICE family of guided aerial munitions by RAFAEL. The process of development, testing, and crew training had to be accelerated during combat operations, and RAFAEL received a requirement to triple production rates. SPICE 250, known in the Air Force as "Small Hail" ("Barad Katan"), is a full-fledged munition weighing about 125 kg with a range of up to 100 km. Four such munitions can be mounted on a single rack. The family is based on electro-optical guidance technology: a camera in the front of the munition captures the terrain, and an algorithm compares the image in real time with a photo of the target loaded before the sortie. This allows SPICE to operate in areas where GPS signals are jammed. The article traces the evolution of the family: from a kit that turned a standard Mk-84 bomb into a glide munition (1999) to SPICE 250 with AI-based automatic target recognition and deep learning (2019). The system can detect moving objects, and a two-way data link allows updating the mission during flight. The SPICE family is used not only in Israel: in 2019, RAFAEL and Lockheed Martin signed an agreement for joint promotion in the US. The next step was SPICE 250 ER with a small engine that increases range.