That’s a good treatise on the philosophical “just war theory,” much of which involves determining who legitimate military targets are.
Neutron bombs:
Though the popular belief is that neutron bombs were designed to kill people and leave structures standing–so that you could bomb New York, kill everyone, and then move the population of Stalingrad into fully furnished luxury apartments–I don’t believe that that is the case.
Neutron bombs create much lower blast pressures than other nukes, but release much more penetrating radiation (i.e., the neutrons in the name of the bomb).
The purpose of this is to kill combatants in hardened military targets–esp. tanks, which are resistant to the blasts. Remember, nukes make big explosions, nothing more–they don’t magically vaporize everything in the blast zone, regardless of its composition. So tanks are still a problem when nukes are used in tactical situations. Neutron bombs are designed to pour radiation through the armor and kill the tank drivers.
I think a mental stumbling block a lot of us have is that we automatically think of nukes being used as they were in WWII–on cities. But while such usage is demoralizing and reduces industrial production, you have to remember that all of the generals out there are just as concerned with ways they can use them–just as they use conventional bombs and artillery–to take out enemy combatants in the field.
The thing they don’t exactly come out & say (or another way of looking at ER vs normal nuclear weapons) is that for the same effective range vs. hard targets, the ER warhead has a much smaller area destroyed by blast/heat.
As in, to get the same prompt radiation, you’d have to have something like a 5-10 kiloton normal bomb instead of a 1 kt ER bomb.
So in a sense, it does help minimize collateral destruction for the same intended military effect.
Yes. So if the Soviet forces were on the outskirts of Berlin, NATO could have killed them w/Neutron Bombs without flattening the city itself.
The widely-held misconception is that, for example, once the Soviets occupied Berlin, we could have then dropped Neutron Bombs in the middle of the city and somehow killed them all without damaging the buildings.
I don’t know what the exact comparison is between lethal radiation radius and blast pressure radius. So maybe you could kill everyone in a city using well-placed neutron bombs and only level 50% of the buildings, vs. ordinary nukes leveling 75% of the buildings. But it’s not like you turn off a switch and everyone falls to the ground dead, with no other ill effects to the surroundings.
Also, Whack-A-Mole:
I wasn’t aware that neutron bombs had been banned. I know we don’t have any in our active arsenal now, but I’ve never seen anything saying that we couldn’t. Can you dig up a cite, please?
The minimum force which is necessary to win the war. In the Gulf War we didn’t use “incremental” strikes against Iraqi military forces; we used overwhelming force. But we didn’t randomly carpet bomb Baghdad either.
And I believe we did bomb Hanoi. It’s possible that, given all the circumstances, the Vietnam war was simply unwinnable for the United States, no matter how much force we used. We dropped a lot of explosives on Indochina.
If you’ve just destroyed the enemy homeland with a thermonuclear attack, do you think his surviving ballistic missile submarines are more likely to meekly sail into your harbors and surrender, or to let fly back at you with everything they’ve got?
I stand corrected! I knew it was one or other of those ideas… people or weapons getting destroyed!
I still think it would be preferable to keep the civilians, though. I mean people as a whole are stupid aren’t they?! A few good news writers can always “bend” the truth!
Turns out I was a bit off here. Jimmy Carter halted production of Neutron Bombs in 1978 and Ronald Reagan reversed this decision in 1981.
In addition, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1996 prohibits the detonantion of these weapons (for whatever that is worth).
However, the effects of the bomb are less (and more) destructive than has been suggested.
A 1 Kt Neutron bomb vs. a 10 Kt ‘conventional’ nuke has 1/5 of the physical destructive radius and twice the lethal radius. A neutron bomb has a destructive radius on the order of a few hundred yards…give it a nice, high air burst and relatively little physical damage will be seen on the ground. Unfortunately the people down below will become among the walking dead has radiation kills them over hours or weeks.
I’d like to challenge the idea that war is good for an economy.
I don’t have a cite :o , but it’s one thing to maintain an army, paying soldiers, doing research and constructing buildings; and quite another to fight a war, particularly where your homeland gets attacked.
Us Brits used to be quite profitable and powerful. This changed dramatically after two world wars.
I would contend that war is bad for your economy if your country starts to get seriously trashed.
It is good for your economy if you can mostly avoid that sort of treatment. Heck…even Great Britain’s economy was better off post war than before WWII.
Civil wars are of course not good for a nations economy - but that is a different type of war. Entering into a war does not necessarily mean YOUR homeland will be attacked. I can’t recall the last time anyone actually “attacked” the US during a war. WWII indeed got us out of the depression. War is good for your economy, unless your country is being blow to bits. And even IF your country is being blown to bits, a handful of important people will always get very, very rich (as they either live underground in bunkers or take a vacation to switzerland hehehe).
I can appreciate your perspective of doubt concerning precision bombing. However, I believe I’m in a somewhat unique position among members of this board to enlighten you to a few facts from my personal experience.
Precision Bombing has indeed happened in war. Perhaps the conflict in question was not officially declared “war”, but the base intent is the same: Destroy The Target with minimal collateral damage. I’m looking for a cite that will provide published information about the strike rate over Bosnia and Herzegovnia, but I can assure you that you’d be quite impressed by the rates I witnessed personally.
There is a gap of understanding among the general public when it comes to “Smart Bombs”. There are a number of guidance systems varying from integral guidance to externally mounted devices steered by other, even more remote devices. In the case of the delivery system I worked with, the additional cost to convert munitions from gravity to laser-guided was comparably minimal.
This is a circumstance in which you pray that the intelligence-gathering has been up to snuff. The pilot may be able to provide last minute determinations as to the validity of a target.
I’ve seen video of camera-steered munitions being delivered straight through a window, as well as video featuring the munition travelling through a door and between some poor devil’s legs before cutting out. I admit that this is a bit abnormal, but given the opportunity to get jiggy with it, and not worry about incoming fire, I think a WSO could match that.
As far as delivering a gravity bomb to within a 6 foot radius goes…there’s not really a need to be that accurate. This isn’t like trying to bullseye a womprat up in Beggars Canyon, they’re no bigger than a few feet across, either. We’re talking about the explosive power of several hundred, if not thousand, pounds of TNT. If you’re even close to it, you’re in a world of hurt. However, with modern targeting equipment, I’m quite sure that the accuracy is far greater than in years of old where you just dropped it and flew away.
Re. War good for Economy.
I agree with Kalt on this one, War is definately good for a counrty’s economy; Even if it is being blown to bits. All the re-building that has to take place afterwards ensures massive employment for poorer folk.
Plus just think how good wars are for a country’s level of technology.
I think Britain’s problem is that at the minute things are stagnating a bit. To be completly honest we’re probably about due another big war to get things moving again! Sorry for being the barer of bad news!
This was covered in one of the History Channel programs, Histories Greatest Blunders. Sorry, no cite, but according to them the first 1/2 of the bombing campaigns in Europe arena WW2 were strictly military targets. Apparently some time well into the conflict a German bomber over England was lost and released it’s load over a heavily populated area. After that the bombing of civilians escalated constantly as each country sought revenge for the others indiscriminate bombing. By the end of the war the Allieds were bombing civilians regularily.
Just one observation from left field - most of the post touching on the above has tended to concentrate on the effect on the enemy and their population and ignored the effects on home and international opinion.
As I understand it alot of the rational for us bombing campaign, certainly between 1940 and 1943 was that there was simply no other way for us to hit back at Germany. To stay in a war you have to keep doing something defiant and frigging around in the western desert was simply not going to cut the mustard. To stay in the war and to ultimately maintain even the possibility of the US getting around to actually joining in we needed the appearance of doing someting, virtually anything - and the bombing campaign of Germany could be sold in PR terms as a success irrespectively of the actual results as they could not be proven either way.
At the same time it was being made patiently obvious that we had not yet learnt to stand up to the Germans in open battle (France, Greece, Crete, numerous pre-Montgomery desert driving tours) - a fact which could not be so easily hidden as an ineffective bombing campaign.
Sometimes it’s just a question of hanging on in there and wait for something to come along. None of this is the usual Brit moan about the US being late on the scene but it is often foregotten how long we had to stand alone in the West - over three long years virtually without a victory.
Bomber Command kept us in the war with massive sacrifice.
None of this of course comments on the morality of what their target was - as others have said morality and war are virtually oximorons.
You chose a very bad example here. The 30 years war was “total war” beyond any of the 20th century examples you mention. Up to half the population of Germany dead, all production and trade destroyed, and whole regions, villages, and cities massacred (in some cases by Swedes, but not Magdeburg). The best 20th century comparison is the German conquest of the western Soviet Union.
I would very seriously doubt that there was ever a time when human life was held -on average, the world over- so sacred as it is in the present time. Ancient Greek and Roman historical accounts mention various prisoner-management practices far worse than anything common today.
I would also point out that modern technical armaments cost money, and usually have very limited damage zones (such as a bomb or missile). ~ Those weapons that can inexpensively be used over wide areas (such as chemical/biological weapons) are used far less indiscriminately, when they are used. - MC
Kuper’s “Genocide” offers an interesting perspective on the idea of killing civilians. Essentially, it breaks down to saying that if you want people to engage in a large scale killing of non-military personnel, you have to dehumanize and demonize them, generally over a long period of time. Religious conflict is a breeding ground for this type of attitude shift (according to Kuper). This also has non-military connotations, as seen in Rwanda.
I think (here’s the the trouble starts :)) when applied to more conventional war efforts, where the object isn’t to wipe out the enemy’s population but to control them, the reason that killing civilians is frowned upon is that it’s not good for morale. I can’t see how soldiers would appreciate being ordered to wipe out unarmed citizens, especially if they’re thinking that this could be their family at home. It’s a whole different ballgame when you’re talking about killing mothers and children. Unfortunately that’s my personal theory and it probably doesn’t fly too far under its own power.
