And which conflict was resolved successfully by bombing?
Certainly Afghanistan was famously not resolved by aerial attacks, and the best result we have here so far is “its OK to miss with a $170,000 single bomb if it allegedly, unconfirmedly, kills between 0 and 90 people”
Not to mention this is a single data point and one debatably “accurate” hit does not suddenly make all air ordinance accurate.
There’s an old saying that ‘close only counts for horse shoes and hand grenades’. Bombs follow the same rule.
In this scenario the bombing would be solely for genociding the population, which wasn’t the goal in Afghanistan. Accuracy is irrelevant when your goal is total destruction.
I mean that’s what I’m saying - most bombs miss by more than is effective. Close counts for a hand grenade if you don’t throw it in totally the wrong direction.
Edit: …and so far the only counter argument is “once we dropped a single bomb that was too big to miss - a decade ago.”
you dont have to convince me, of course, I just remain unconvinced
Your entire point is irrelevant to the discussion, though.
If the goal was to only kill enemy combatants without harming civilians, it would be relevant, but that’s not what’s being discussed. It doesn’t matter if the bomb is a little inaccurate if your goal is the total destruction of a city. You just keep dropping them until the job is done.
The point the other person was making is that we have a lot of really big bombs in our arsenal to do it with. The MOAB was just an example of a really big bomb.
Being off target is irrelevant when your margin of error is only 12% of the blast radius.
And most large area bombings aren’t a single bomb. Enough ordinance is typically dropped that it equals 10-20 MOABs.
And which conflict was resolved successfully by bombing?
Certainly Afghanistan was famously not resolved by aerial attacks, and the best result we have here so far is “its OK to miss with a $170,000 single bomb if it allegedly, unconfirmedly, kills between 0 and 90 people”
Not to mention this is a single data point and one debatably “accurate” hit does not suddenly make all air ordinance accurate.
There’s an old saying that ‘close only counts for horse shoes and hand grenades’. Bombs follow the same rule.
In this scenario the bombing would be solely for genociding the population, which wasn’t the goal in Afghanistan. Accuracy is irrelevant when your goal is total destruction.
I mean that’s what I’m saying - most bombs miss by more than is effective. Close counts for a hand grenade if you don’t throw it in totally the wrong direction.
Edit: …and so far the only counter argument is “once we dropped a single bomb that was too big to miss - a decade ago.”
you dont have to convince me, of course, I just remain unconvinced
Your entire point is irrelevant to the discussion, though.
If the goal was to only kill enemy combatants without harming civilians, it would be relevant, but that’s not what’s being discussed. It doesn’t matter if the bomb is a little inaccurate if your goal is the total destruction of a city. You just keep dropping them until the job is done.
The point the other person was making is that we have a lot of really big bombs in our arsenal to do it with. The MOAB was just an example of a really big bomb.
Yeah, but I’m saying it doesn’t work. Accuracy is only one part of it - but also you can’t destroy a city without accuracy.
London, Dresden, etc have all been bombed for years at a time and still stand. I think you’re over estimating the efficacy of bombs.