Moral quandry: A smart-bombing army vs. a dumb-bombing army

Great Debates
1

Like they say at the beginning of Law & Order, this question was inspired by actual events, but depicts no real persons or circumstances. In other words people, this is a hypothetical “what if” scenario, so let’s not get too bogged down in the techical minutea; let’s try to deal with the moral issues instead.

Okay. Let’s say the USA (or some hypotheicial nation if it makes the question more technically plausible) engaged a military enemy that was capable of striking back at us on our home soil. We’re talking a strictly conventional-weapons war here. We begin our offensive with the “smart bomb” technology we are currently using against Iraq, purposefully minimizing collateral damage against civilians and non-military infrastructure.

But say the enemy has no such capabilities. They send their bombers over our airspace and make a good-faith effort to hit only military and military-support targets. But because they are dropping bombs “WWII-style” they end up killing far more civilians and sinking far more jet-skis than we do.

Their leader makes a credible case before the world that, regrettably, this is the best their army can do. But they will not stop the bombing because they have the right to defend themselves and apply counteroffensive measures.

So, what does the USA (or that hypothetical country) do? Suck it up and take it? Disengage the targetting hardware on their bombs and let 'em fly willy-nilly just like the other guy. Trade them smart-bombs for dumb ones to spare our own population?

Personally, I think the “American Street” would go utter ape-sh*t times ten if they saw us taking out tanks in parking lots filled with baby carriages while all of Brooklyn burned in a failed attempt to hit Fort Hamilton. And I don’t know how the Pentagon would react to such an outcry.

2

What does smart-bomb country do? Just like in any other conflict: destroy their enemy’s ability to fight, even quicker if the bad guys are spewing random high explosives.

3

Tit for Tat. They dumb bomb us, we anhilate them.

4

As mentioned above, the entire purpose of smart technology is to maximize the damage done to the enemy per each ordnance delivered. How and why would “dumb” bombing by the enemy alter that strategy? We might step up our number of daily sorties in order to more quickly disrupt their C[sup]3[/sup] capabilities and refocus upon their delivery systems (bombers, airstrips, AWACS and munitions dumps). Other than that I can see no reason why we would even want to stoop to carpet bombing just because we could.

Our weapons systems not only maximize enemy losses, they purposefully minimize the risk our individual pilots and soldiers experience on the battle field. Ask Saddam’s troops how much they like not knowing when the next one is going to hit. It must be pretty unnerving.

5

Limiting collateral damage is a political bonus, a side effect of the actual purpose of precision munitions. Killing civilians by the thousands is not militarily useful. The Blitz didn’t work. It did not sap Britain’s will to fight. The bombing of Berlin didn’t work, either. There just wasn’t enough effective reduction in the capacity of either country to wage war.

Precision weapons are not used to be more humane. The command structure will certainly bring it up at press conferences, but the fact is that we have always been willing to risk the lives of non-combatants if the military need dictated, and I assume we still are. But we don’t have to do it as much, because if we want to destroy a radar transmitter, we can drop one bomb on the transmitter. Since we can hit the transmitter very reliably, we don’t have to use a great big bomb, either, but can use a smaller bomb. That gives us two benefits. First, that same plane can carry five other bombs and hit five other targets. Second, we can brag about how considerate we were to avoid collateral damage. Of the two benefits, the first is by far the more important, from a military point of view.

Interesting side note, when a coalition air commander was asked if our air missions were “softening up” the Republican Guard units outside of Baghdad, he said, “We are not softening them up. We are killing them.”

So, if a conventional bombing campaign was being waged against us, we would almost assuredly step up the use of precision munitions, not reduce them. But we would make enemy air and reconnaissance assets our first priority. Precision bombing of ordinance depots, airfields, and fuel sources would be more likely to change the outcome of the war than killing civilians in larger numbers for revenge.

Tris

6

I don’t see how making your weapons less likely to hit their target just so you can increase their civilian casualties is going to “spare” your own population. In fact, in addition to reducing the effectiveness of our air missions, the other country could quite likely see it as an escalation, and interpret it to mean the US is saying “civilians are free game.” I’m sure you could find a similar comparison in the bombing campaigns of WW2. The proper responce would be more smart bombs, not less… With every single one you can spare being targeted at the airfields launching the bomber raids.

7

Smart-bomb Nation (SBN) takes a “dumb-bomb” hit, then uses it’s smart-bombs to destroy Dumb-bomb Nation’s (DBN’S) airfields and fuel depots and whatnot, and destroys DBN’s ability to launch further air strikes.

There isn’t a moral angle to this that I can see. If fact, if SBN is smart, their opening attack clobbers as much of DBN’s air support capability as possible.

Small technologically-advanced nations can prevail against much larger nations with less advanced weapons, without resorting to their tactics. Israel, for example, has successfully defended itself at least three times, without having to destroy Arab cities.

The point is the SBN has choices on how the war will proceed, while DBN does not.

8

You misread him. The way I understood the line “Trade them smart-bombs for dumb ones to spare our own population?”, stuyguy suggested selling smart bombs to the opponent, so that they are not forced to use “dumb” bombs.

9

The whole point of precision bombing is to destroy military assests in the target area. So, how will the ‘dumb bombing’ work for long when the more advanced country is attacking the airforce or the less-advanced?

The idea is that you protect your civilians by removing the enemy’s ability to hit them at all, surely.

Cheers.

10

Triskadecamus writes:

(TB - long time no see.)

I had thought the point of precision bombing was to avoid civilian targets and keep the voters at home happy when they watch it on TV.

11

That’s a fringe benefit in the free-press Western nations. If the USSR was still around, with military technology comparable to the U.S., they’d also use precision munitions in the interest of efficiency, even though their press was still government-controlled.

Ideally, your ultimate weapon wouldn’t be some superduper H-Bomb that could lay waste to an entire country, but an ultraprecise satellite laser that could deliver insta-death to 500 specific people: the top governmental and military leadership of the enemy country. If your long-term goal is conquest (or at least favourable trade), the precision strike that destroys as few productive people and as little infrastructure as possible is the way to go. The “mercy” stuff looks nice in a President’s memoirs, but efficiency should be the real goal if you want to get the war over with and get back to your normal routine ASAP.

12

Everyone nailed that one. Precision weapons allow you to put fewer bombs on the target to achieve the same result. If, as the United States is currently doing, a nation retro-fits its dumb bomb-stock with precision guidance add-ons, it vastly increases that nation’s destructive power against specific targets. Reducing collateral damage is just a welcome side-effect.

(It occurs to me that our pal David Simmons, who I think flew B-26s in ground attack roles during WWII, might actually be able to give us some actual figures as to how many planes had to be put on a specific target to ensure its destruction. Even though the 9th Air Force was one of the most formidable organizations ever employed in war, I’d be surprised if a single WWII-era aircraft could be depended upon to take out, say, a concrete-reinforced bunker. A single F15E, by contrast, can in theory get really, really close to five bunkers in one sortie.)

However, history shows us at least two sub-examples of components of a “dumb” air force thoroughly whipping parts of a “smart” or at least clearly superior air force through the use of superior numbers and the ability to replace losses. In WWII, the Me-262 was untouchable as an air superiority fighter, but the Germans couldn’t field enough to even make a scratch against the Mighty Eighth. In WWI, the Fokker D-VII was clearly superior in combat in 1918, but it too was incapable in and of itself of establishing anything more than local air superiority.

From that perspective, a huge, dumb, cheap, replaceable air force might hold some advantages over a smaller, technologically advanced one. When an air force is huge and smart, like the USAF, it’s very difficult to challenge.

Said stuyguy:

Something akin to this actually happened. In the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe was steadily wearing down Fighter Command and was within (distant) sight of achieving air superiority in southern England. Then some stray bombs fell on London, Churchill ordered a reprisal raid against Berlin, and Hitler went ape-sh*t times ten and re-focused the Blitz from the British airfields to London. That allowed Fighter Command enough time to re-group and recover its losses, and any German invasion of England, however fanciful it had been to start with, was permanently averted.

13

Speaking of the coverage of the war on t.v… Is anyone else bored of the relentless repetition of a handful of facts? BBC1 had it all day, every day for a week - what’s a student to do when daytime t.v. is marginalised? Talk about the real casulaties of war…
Cheers.