kevin@ccs.QueensU.CA (Kevin Broekhoven) (05/05/91)
From: kevin@ccs.QueensU.CA (Kevin Broekhoven) In March I posed the following question to this list. > My limited understanding of warfare is that since the invention of > fire-arms, a major theme of military theory has been command, control, > and "concentration" of fire-power on unfriendly targets. I'm wondering > how military doctrine chooses the method of delivery of this awesome > modern fire-power to the enemy, and to what degree economic > considerations affect these decisions. i.e. why choose "air" bombardment > over sea or land bombardment? Concentration of firepower? > Command & Control? Protection of weapons-delivery "assets"? > (why do these guys sound more like accountants than warriors?) There were a number of good responses to the list, a number of excellent replies came to me directly. I include hilights from a number of articles below. -knb. Kevin Broekhoven Computing Centre applications programmer Queens University K7L-3N6 (Canada) Bitnet, NetNorth: BROEKHVN@QUCDN IP: kevin@ccs.QueensU.CA (130.15.48.9) X.400: Kevin.Broekhoven@QueensU.CA Bell: (613) 545-2235 fax: 545-6798 military@cbnews.att.com (Bill Thacker) writes... [...lotsa good stuff deleted ...] One more factor comes into play there. Most artillery casualities come in the first few seconds of the barrage, before people make it to cover. You want something that maximizes that effect; the MLRS is perfect. Conventional artillery doesn't do that well. The use of B-52's also carries a psychological advantage not had by arty. I suspect there was some hesitance to use the battleships' guns because of the Iowa turret explosion. denbeste@ursa-major.spdcc.com (Steven Den Beste) adds... There are at least three reasons to prefer "smart" ordnance over "dumb" ordnance of any kind: 1. The efficiency is far greater. One smart bomb can take out a bridge with a high likelihood, whereas it may take hundreds or thousands (no joke!) of dumb bombs to do the same thing. If the smart weapon costs 50 times more, you may be money ahead anyway. 2. It is more reliable and more schedulable. Modern warfare is immensely complicated and logistics overwhelms almost every other aspect of it. If there are strategic targets in your enemy's rear which must be removed before you can attack, if you use smart weapons you can be pretty sure of getting them within a small time window, whereas dumb weapons may take 1 day or may take a month. You therefore have to make your logistics plan based on a pessimistic schedule, which can really louse you up. 3. It is more precise and therefore has a very high likelihood of avoiding what they've been calling "collateral damage" - that is, killing women, children and old men. On the first night of bombing in Baghdad, three Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missiles hit dead center on the Iraqi Ministry of Air defenses, turning it into a pile of smoking rubble - while doing no damage at all to the hospital on one side of it or the high-rise apartment buildings on the other side. gregs@meaddata.com (Greg Smith) writes.... > Looking at the cost of munitions, air-dropped "dumb" bombs must be > cheaper than artillery, which in turn must be cheaper than "smart" bombs > or any type of missile. That depends on how many dumb (or more properly "iron") bombs it takes to destroy the target ... remember too that you need recon flights and personel to look at pictures to do BDA (battle damage assessment). The "smart" bombs are simply iron bombs with an electronic laser seeker and fins for guidance attached. I have no idea on the cost but I suspect the the electronics are not orders of magnitude more expensive. > I would expect then, that the cheapest way to hit a target would be via > large calibre artillery mounted on a sea vessel like a WWII battle > ship; if the target was out of range of sea-based artillery, I would Unfortunately the limits of the 16" guns on the 4 US BB's is around 22 miles. You wouldn't be able to hit targets too far inland. Remember that the depth of the coastal waters and presense of mines is a factor. The BB's would also need AAW ships and ASW ships to protect it from subs and land bases anti-ship missiles (like the Chinese Silkworm). This makes the BB operate further out to sea. [ stuff deleted ] The production line for 16" barrels is no longer in operation. They do have a limited life. There were lots of mines along the coast as well as the threat of silkworms. > Also, I got the impression that very limited use was made of field > artillery, that it was used to harrass the troops defending the > "Saddam line", rather than being used to deliver major amounts of > destructive fire-power. The Multiple Launch Rockets were the only field pieces that outranged the larger Iraqi guns. The other arty had to set up, fire, and move out before the Iraqi gunners could fire counterbattery rounds. Ergo lots of moving and little firing. estalker%phantom@blackbird.afit.af.mil ( Edward C. Stalker,,, ) writes... Subject: Logistics of Violance [ stuff deleted ] I'm a student at the Air Force Institute of Technology, and this is where we study the management of violance. It's a fully accredditted MBA program, so that may be why it seems like a lot of our generals sound like accountants or businessmen - in effect, they are. Really, although it sounds a bit like a bad joke, there are many paralells - although there is a limit to which you can take the paralells. Many of the problems in Viet Nam came from not knowing where to draw the line. If you're familiar with Goldratt's Theory of Constraints, you can substitute the Ultimate Goal of a Military Organization as a need to destroy the enemy's will/ability to resist at the lowest possible cost...in lives as well as money. It then becomes necessary to find "optimal" or "satisficing" solutions to your military problems in the light of a set of limiting constraints. In Iraq/KTO (Kuwait Theatre of Operations), Naval gunfire or artillery is frequently the weapon of choice. Your analysis of cost/ton of ordnance is not too far from wrong, and if the only consideration lay in putting x number of tons on target, you would be correct. What you are forgetting, is that the objective of war is to disable the enemy will/ability to resist, not tons of bombs dropped (where did you drop them and what did they accomplish?) The technology of the "smart" weapon has finally advanced to the point that last minute course corrrections can be made to ensure that virtually all warheads strike at right angles to the surface. The oblique, or glancing shot is virtually eliminated, thus making each shot *much* more effective. Its basically a cost-benefit tradeoff, then, you have to look at the characteristics of the target and how critical your accuracy must be. For example, the Republican Guard Positions, out in the desert, with no civilian population around, was pounded in the cheapest possible way - ARCLIGHT- 275 lb iron bombs dumped off a 30 year old airplane. On the other hand, where there were no civilians, but plenty of Iraqui AAA, artillery was the answer, when possible. The battlewagons were used when they could get past the minefields, reefs and shoals of the coast. I started out my military career as a sailor, and I remember the gulf as a nightmare of shoals. Finally, when you need great accuracy, when you don't want to have to go back and try again, when you want a high probability of kill, you use air delivered PGM (Precision Guided Munitions). If you can make the kill with one pass, the $20,000 of the GBU-15 (2000 lb bomb with guidance package, TV or IIR)M makes more sense than making several shots with artillery. For an interesting viewpoint on AF views on Airpower, may I recommend Dewitt S. Copp's books, Aa Few Great Captains and its sequel Forged in Fire. If you can get ahold of it, Air Power and Warfare: Preoceedings of the Eighth Military History Symposium, published by the Department of the AF, is extremely informative on this subject.