Network-enabled weapons are a class of air-to-ground precision-guided munitions that are being developed by a number of countries.
[1][2] A derivative of GPS-guided weapons, which are guided to a specific coordinate entered prior to release, network-enabled weapons have the additional ability to have targeting coordinates updated in flight through the use of a common datalink, and be tracked by aircraft and other platforms[3] logged into the same network.
The concept for network-enabled weapons originated at the U.S. Air Force's Air Combat Command headquarters in 2003 as a solution to the problem of attacking moving targets in all-weather, high-threat environments.
The Air Force's Air Armament Center refined the idea and in late 2003 declared network-enabled weapons to be the "single most cost effective means available for enhancing overall armament capability.
[3] Subsequently, the requirements for the Small Diameter Bomb Increment 2 were modified to incorporate the capability.