Pave Knife

The Ford Aerospace AN/AVQ-10 Pave Knife was an early targeting pod developed by the USAF and US Navy to designate and guide laser-guided bombs.

Pave Knife was developed in 1969 to replace the original, essentially improvised Airborne Laser Designator (ALD) and TRIM pod (see A-6 Intruder).

Pave Knife was a roughly banana-shaped external pod, weighing about 550 kg (1,200 lb), containing a steerable laser and closed-circuit television camera.

The Pave Knife bid was a firm fixed-price contract, involving design, development, and manufacture of one prototype, which was considered to be of vital nature due to the war in Vietnam.

The remainder of the design, prototype fabrication and system integration was completed within budget, and on-time with delivery accomplished in an astonishing 6 months from the contract award date.