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Precision firepower: smart bombs, dumb strategy
Military Review, July-August, 2003 by Timothy R. Reese
The Theory in Practice
Military theorists have historically overestimated firepower's effectiveness. Precision firepower might be tactically and operationally decisive when the military aim is negative, in the sense of punishing an enemy for taking certain action or in denying him certain military options, but no matter how precisely firepower is delivered, it cannot be strategically decisive, for short of a Carthaginian peace or an Armageddon, the policy ends of war require something more than annihilation. Without a fundamental, long term change in the enemy's behavior, the victor is forced to continually parry the enemy's operations so long as the enemy sees fit to test the victor's means and resolve. Precision firepower might make the job of ground forces immensely easier and less costly, but in the end the victor must confront the vanquished face-to-face to lay claim to the victory.
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A number of technical, tactical, and political factors have bedeviled the real-world application of precision firepower since its birth. The following paragraphs briefly review the factors' limitations.
Technical limitations. As with any weapon system, there are technical limits to precision firepower's effectiveness. Bad weather can obscure the target area and distort the laser beams that guide weapons to their targets. Guidance systems can fail and send bombs off target, perhaps into civilian areas. Coordinating the reconnaissance, intelligence-collection, and targeting processes is extremely complex and not foolproof. Jungle, mountain, and urban terrain makes targeting fiendishly difficult, even with ground spotters. Also, simple mechanical reliability is never perfect. (14) The PGMs' accuracy has improved by orders of magnitude since their introduction late in the Vietnam war; nevertheless, precision weapons' real-world accuracy is never quite up to the advertised level.
Monetary limitations. Even with a much-increased budget for defense, the prosaic issues of cost, production, and logistics can combine to limit the availability of precision strike weapons. PGMs are expensive, time-consuming to produce, and are expended rapidly. In one admittedly extreme case in Afghanistan, an F16 fighter-bomber and a B2 stealth bomber used several 500-pound bombs, several cluster munitions, and sixteen 2,000-pound bombs to attack one Toyota pickup truck containing 15 suspected Taliban fighters. (15)
Political considerations. Political considerations have often limited the effectiveness of airpower at the strategic level of war. From reluctance to indiscriminately bomb civilian targets in World War II, to the fear of nuclear war with China and Russia in Korea, to detente-imposed restrictions on North Vietnamese targets, to the reluctance of some NATO nations to sanction the bombing of dual-use targets in Serbia, the U.S. has often felt the need to limit the application of its immense technological superiority when using firepower at the strategic level of war. The particular reasons are different, as are the wars, but an irrefutable pattern emerges from the historical record. (16) The usual response of firepower advocates has been that in the next war, using better technology unshackled from political limitations, firepower will deliver on its strategic promise. But the political object of the war will always limit the utility of firepower, no matter how precisely applied.
