Precision Guided Munitions limit collateral damage, but...

[cthulu2016]

Last edited Sat Jun 9, 2012, 04:16 AM - Edit history (1)

Guided bombs limit collateral damage, but not as much as they probably should.

The formula here is similar to the formula for how much bandwidth internet ads take up. The internet is technically faster than it used to be, but the bullshit content keeps increasing to eat up much of the gains because people accept it... we have a cultural expectation of buginess and slowness and imperfection on the net and will tolerate an only slightly faster experience as an improvement.

When smart bomb technology came along it reduced collateral damage, but it also allowed for riskier targets, giving back some of the gains of the technology. (We can bomb a building next to a school with very little chance of bombing the school, so bombing next to schools is now more acceptable, with the generalized risk that entails.)

I is indeed "better" than before, but not nearly as much better as if the range of acceptable targets were not expanded.

But since we have a dumb-bomb era developed culture of acceptance of some collateral damage we don't demand waaaaaay better. Just better.

[jberryhill]

1. Oh I don't know...

It seems to me there are some who were implicitly fine with cruise missiles, but think "drones", per se, are the worst evil since mustard gas.

I mean, you are back at smart bombs. Unless you are talking about on-the-ground hand-laser-designated bombs, drones have human visual target acquisition and fire control.

I agree with the observation about riskier targets, but I disagree that is technology driven as much as it is driven by the primary conflicts being asymmetric. We are fighting what amounts to a gang which is not a sovereign entity.

[cthulu2016]

2. Okay, okay...

Smart is easier to type than "precision guided"

Though the Desert Storm generation of bombs is what started all this. (Was that the conflict where CNN keep showing the damn bomb going down the chimney clip?)

Little known fact: The majority of bombs dropped from planes in Desert Freedom... or whatever The Chimp's Folly is called... were dumb bombs.

[jberryhill]

3. It's still different

Strategic v. Tactical

There were a lot of smart bombs used in Kosovo. But that was a situation that still involved a traditional situation in which the point was to discourage a sovereign entity from exercising sovereignty over a given piece of territory. So blowing up bridges and roads to disrupt supply or, as in Iraq, degrading industrial capacity relevant to warfare, is unlike fighting a "war on terror" which really means "a war on terrorists" - i.e. designated individuals or groups of individuals who coordinate actions which do not require industrial infrastructure, transport of supplies, movement of troops, and who are not even directly seeking sovereignty.

[1-Old-Man]

4. There is no such thing as a smart bomb. All bombs are ignorantly murderous.

What we now call collateral damage we used to call demoralizing the populace, al la the fire-bombing of Tokyo or German population centers during the second world war.

Calling murder something else doesn't change a thing.