The GBU-24 "Paveway III" bomb was a combination of a general-purpose bomb and laser guidance components to make a laser-guided weapon. The Paveway consisted of the guidance control unit, an adapter group, and an airfoil group. These additions to the bomb enabled it to detect a laser-illuminated target and guided the bomb to the point of impact.
The laser designation could come from a ground source, the aircraft delivering the weapon, or from a separate aircraft nearby. These designators worked through a pulse-coding system that supplied the same code for the seeker and the designator, ensuring that the bomb would track only the desired target. The code utilized a truncated decimal system with numbers 1 through 8 and was correlated to a specific Pulse Repetition Frequency (PRF).
This type of coding allowed a single aircraft to deliver several weapons almost at one time. The bomb was just over 14 feet long and had a wingspan of almost 7 feet. It was 3 feet in diameter and weighed 2,000 pounds. It was armed with either a BLU-109 penetrator bomb (GBU-24/A) or a Mark 84 general purpose bomb (GBU-24/B).
