Precision firepower: smart bombs, dumb strategy

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

(14.) For one example of these limitations, see Grant T. Hammond, "Myths of the Air War over Serbia," Aerospace Power Journal 14 (Winter 2000 : 78-86. Studies of PGM effectiveness in Afghanistan are still underway. See Hunter Keeter, "Pentagon Downplays Preliminary Look at Weapons Accuracy in Afghanistan," Defense Daily, 10 April 2002, 7.

(15.) The truck was damaged and some of the fighters killed, including a woman with her child. See David Wood, "Fair Target," Army Times, 62, 25 March 2002, 17.

(16.) There am a number of works on the overestimated effectiveness Of strategic bombing. See Conrad Crane, Bombs, Cities, and Civilians: American Airpower Strategy in World War II (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993); and Crane, American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 1950-53 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000); Gian Gentile, How Effective is Strategic Bombing? Lessons Learned from World War II to Kosovo (New York University press, 2001); Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Airpower; The American Bombing of North Vietnam (New York: The Free Press, 1989.

(17.) Cad yon Clausewitz, On War, trans. and eds., Michael Howard and Peter Paret (New Jersey: Princeton University Press Press, 1976), 77.

(18.) Robert H. Scales, Jr., "America's Army in Transition: Preparing for War in the Precision Age," Army Issue Paper No, 3 (Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College (AWC), Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), December 1999), 13. See also ed., Scales, "A Sword with Two Edges: Maneuver in 21st Century Warfare," in Future Warfare: An Anthology (Carlisle Barracks, PA: AWC, SSI), 2001.

(19.) Michael E. O'Hanlon, "A Flawed Masterpiece," Foreign Affairs 81 (May/June 2002): 49-54.

(20.) Stephen Biddle, Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare: Implications for the Army and Defense Policy (Carlisle, PA: AWC, SSI 20 October 2002).

(21.) Antulio J. Echevarria II, Rapid Decisive Operations: An Assumptions-Based Critique (Carlise, PA: AWC, SSI, November 2001).

(22.) See Benjamin S. Lambeth, NATO's Air War for Kosovo : A Strategic and Operational Assessment (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001), 102-16.

(23.) See Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War; Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat (New York: Public Affairs, 2001).

(24.) The case was never formally taken up, but the threat looms large in the future. See Henry A. Kissinger, "The Pitfalls of Universal Jurisdiction," Foreign Affairs 80 (July/August 2001): 93.

(25.) Victor David Hanson argues persuasively that technological superiority, although important, has not bean the principle meson for Western military dominance over time. Instead, he proposes that an array Of political, social, and cultural institutions is responsible for Western military supremacy. Substituting technology for a lack of will and in place of clear strategic thinking could be the undoing of this historical trend. See Hanson, Culture and Carnage: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (New York: Doubleday, 2001).

(26.) Phillip K. Meilinger, "Precision Aerospace power. Discrimination, and the Future of War," Aerospace Power Journal 15 (Fall 2001): 12.