Brilliant missiles on the Horizon

The history of warfare has been marked by an overwhelming expectation that when a weapon was launched it would not hit its target. In the case of rifle fire during the Civil War in the United States, the odds in favor of a miss were about 100 000 to 1. In air-to-ground bombing in World War II (except in instances of area bombing), the odds in favor of a miss were still on the order of 20 to 1. Even in the early days of missile development, the unstated goal of those working on the V-2 rocket was simply to make it a more dangerous situation to be at the target than to be at the launch point.