Smart weapons represent a key element of military power for countries around the world, and nothing symbolizes them more than smart bombs—the guided aerial bombs that the United States debuted in the Vietnam War. Yet, international relations scholars know little about these weapons and what explains their proliferation. In this paper, we theorize about the key drivers of smart bomb proliferation, including an interaction between the security environment, regime type, and the interest of states in precision to help them follow the law of war. We then introduce a new dataset on smart bombs from 1960-2017. The results show that internal and external security threats make countries more likely to acquire smart bombs. These effects interact with regime type and whether countries are more likely to ratify treaties related to the law of war. GDP per capita and economic capacity also appears fundamental to explaining smart bomb adoption.

智能武器代表了世界各国军事力量的关键要素，没有什么比智能炸弹更能象征它们了——美国在越南战争中首次亮相的制导航空炸弹。然而，国际关系学者对这些武器以及它们扩散的原因知之甚少。在本文中，我们对智能炸弹扩散的关键驱动因素进行了理论分析，包括安全环境、政权类型和各国精确利益之间的相互作用，以帮助它们遵守战争法。然后，我们介绍了 1960-2017 年智能炸弹的新数据集。结果表明，内部和外部安全威胁使各国更有可能获得智能炸弹。这些影响与政权类型以及各国是否更有可能批准与战争法有关的条约相互作用。