Precision firepower: smart bombs, dumb strategy

Military Review, July-August, 2003 by Timothy R. Reese

You mayfly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life--but if you desire to defend it, to protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud.--T.R. Fehrenbach (1)

EVER SINCE DAVID slew Goliath with a stone from his slingshot, every combatant's desire has been to defeat his enemy from afar. Since the Industrial Revolution the question has been asked, "Why send a soldier when a bullet will do?" The natural desire is to limit the need to go face-to-face with one's enemy and hence to avoid the enemy's counterblows. In 1999, historian John Keegan said, "Now there is a new turning point to fix on the calendar: June 3, 1999, when the capitulation of President Milosevic proved that a war can be won by airpower alone." (2) First muskets, then artillery, and now bombs and missiles have almost eliminated the Homeric clash of heroes.

In the 21st-century Information Age, the preference for firepower delivered by air and supported from space has reached new heights. Weapons are now so accurate that we describe them as precision-guided munitions (PGMs), "smart," or even "brilliant" bombs. Unguided projectiles are merely "dumb" bombs. The United States, using intelligence and precision weapons, can destroy almost anything, anywhere, any time. Theorists have advanced a number of schools of thought concerning what this capability means to military strategy. Although these concepts differ on particular issues, they stem from a common belief that precision weapons offer a new way of accomplishing military strategy.

In his history of air operations in the Persian Gulf war, U.S. Air Force (USAF) historian Richard P. Hallion triumphantly concludes, "Simply stated, airpower won the Gulf war. In the airpower era, neither armies nor navies can be considered the primary instrument of securing victory in war." (3) Clearly, some theorists see that, more often than not, land or naval forces should support aerospace power as the preeminent military arm. This is a dramatic reversal of traditional roles. (4)

John A. Warden, an early advocate of precision firepower, sees enemy systems as five interconnecting rings that precisely targeted air strikes could destroy. (5) Air strikes could "reduce capability ..., degrade effectiveness, [and like a living organism, make enemy systems] susceptible to the infectious ideas we want to become part of it." (6) Warden says that the advent of PGMs makes it possible to separate an enemy's military strength from his willpower, destroying the former and rendering the latter irrelevant.

The U.S. Air Force coined the phrase "global reach, global power" to describe its ability to deliver firepower with great precision anywhere in the world on short notice. USAF doctrine defines precision engagement as "the ability ... to cause discriminate strategic, operational, or tactical effects." (7) Precision engagement also "creates the opportunity for a different approach to harnessing military power to policy objectives." (8) Precision weapons enable the concept of "strategic attack," a term that describes "operations intended to directly achieve strategic effects ... and to achieve their objectives without first having to necessarily engage the adversary's fielded military forces in extended operations at the operational and tactical levels of war." (9) Recent strategists use the term "effects-based operations" (EBO).

EBO advocates believe technological advances make it possible "for air attacks to create physical and psychological effects that combine to quickly prevent a fielded land force from functioning well enough to achieve its desired objectives." (10) In the apparent race to embrace the Information Age, strategists at the U.S. Joint Forces Command are using the term "rapid decisive operations" (RDO) to describe a new concept of war. RDO combines effects-based operations "with superior knowledge and command and control capabilities" to render an enemy incoherent, thereby forcing him to "cease actions that are against U.S. interests or have his capabilities defeated." (11)

B.H. Liddell-Hart's definition of military strategy is, "The art of distributing and applying military means to fulfill the ends of policy." (21) use the term "precision firepower" to describe the theory that firepower, usually delivered from the air with great accuracy against a discrete set of targets, can lead directly to the defeat of the enemy and to the attainment of U.S. policy objectives. (13)

The thread of continuity between the various strains of thought is that precision firepower will revolutionize military strategy, not just tactics and operations. The belief is that armies will be able to quickly achieve policy objectives, and wars will be won that will have low casualties and collateral damage and will use few, if any, ground forces. Precision firepower is sometimes said to blur the distinctions between the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of war. This blurting encourages thinkers to equate the ability to destroy something with the purpose behind destroying it--to equate the means and ways of strategy with its ends. This is indeed a breathtaking theory, and it offers a revolutionary route to victory in war. If only it were so.