Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Jakers123

How is it possible that the largest air forces of the world, USA, Russia, Turkey,etc. bomb a ,,primitive" terrorist organization for 2 years and that the results are barely visible? If the planes are so ineffective against isis, how were those planes expected to fight against ussr/usa during cold war?

Of course no one excepts them to defeat ISIS in one day, but still, when you bomb command posts, ammo depot's and such for years, you are supposed to have at least somewhat visible results...

Another example would be the not that famous 1999 battle of Koshare (and Gorozhup) in Yugoslavia, basically for 2 months NATO intensively bombed Yugoslav positions along the Albanian border (in order to make a path for KLA to invade Kosovo from Albania) and there was the KLA on the ground and yet they didn't succeed for 2 months, in the end the peace treaty was signed and the Yugoslav forces withdrew. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ko%C5%A1are

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ORIGINAL: Matti Kuokkanen

How intensive are those bombings compared to bombings of Japan in Second World War and North Vietnam in Vietnam War?

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ORIGINAL: Alchenar

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ORIGINAL: Matti Kuokkanen

How intensive are those bombings compared to bombings of Japan in Second World War and North Vietnam in Vietnam War?

What do you think is more effective:

a) 1000 tons of bombs where 5% land somewhere within 10 miles of the target

b) One bomb that hits the target

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ORIGINAL: sulla05

If bombing is allowed to be used as it was in WWII or Vietnam, it would be extremely effective.

Precision bombing with no or little collateral damaged has only limited effectiveness.

The small amount of bombs dropped by one B-52 in the video shows what I mean.

Now imagine 100 B-52s in formation dropping bombs on that same landscape.

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ORIGINAL: Orm

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ORIGINAL: sulla05

If bombing is allowed to be used as it was in WWII or Vietnam, it would be extremely effective.

Precision bombing with no or little collateral damaged has only limited effectiveness.

The small amount of bombs dropped by one B-52 in the video shows what I mean.

Now imagine 100 B-52s in formation dropping bombs on that same landscape.

I say that effectiveness depends on what the goal is. Without going into politics I would claim that achieving the US goal would be very hard with a WWII bomb campaign. It is even likely that it would make it harder to achieve the goals of the campaign. So, while it has huge impact it would be less effective.

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ORIGINAL: Orm

And how would it be possible to talk about current bombings without politics? At least when you talk about the effect of the bombings. War in itself is political. Hence is bombings political.

Do I have to bring Clausewitz into this?

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ORIGINAL: TulliusDetritus

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ORIGINAL: Orm

And how would it be possible to talk about current bombings without politics? At least when you talk about the effect of the bombings. War in itself is political. Hence is bombings political.

Do I have to bring Clausewitz into this?

Per definition that's what it is.

We still can talk about military operations I guess, regardless of the politics shaping these operations.

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ORIGINAL: Orm
But measuring the effectiveness of said bombing is hard without getting into politics. Both the goal with the bombings and the restrictions are political.

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ORIGINAL: TulliusDetritus

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ORIGINAL: Alchenar

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ORIGINAL: Matti Kuokkanen

How intensive are those bombings compared to bombings of Japan in Second World War and North Vietnam in Vietnam War?

What do you think is more effective:

a) 1000 tons of bombs where 5% land somewhere within 10 miles of the target

b) One bomb that hits the target

Define target.

If you can...

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ORIGINAL: sulla05

The thinking for the latter part of the 20th century and now is that 100 civilian casualties are extremely excessive. Compared to Allied and Axis bombing in WWII it is a very small drop in the bucket.

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ORIGINAL: Anthropoid

I seem to recall there was a United States military report written either in the late 1940s or early 1950s which used the value of hindsight to attempt to create synthetic estimates of "how effective" the strategic bombing campaigns against Nazi Germany had actually been at achieving its goals. I also seem to recall that the overall conclusion was: 'meh.'

I think the effects in the Vietnam conflict may have had more promise, but here, there is no value of hindsight and the North Vietnamese command and government are famous for disinformation.

Japan: small land area, very compact communities, built predominantly out of highly flammable materials. I believe the effectiveness here was greater, but had the war drug on longer, the effectiveness would have had diminishing effects.

The general operational response to a strategic bombing campaign seems to be: disperse (troops, industry and materiel), do not travel en masse, and travel at night as much as possible. I want to say that, until rather late before VE Day, those aspects of the German war machine which could be dispersed into rural cottage industry settings, else put underground/otherwise protected from bombing were still churning out an impressive amount of production.

I don't think there is any question that: 1. Tactical airstrikes can make a huge difference in winning battles; 2. Strategic bombing campaigns cause the enemy trouble, force him/her to adapt and exposes them and their stuff to a new and heightened risk; 3. Targeted attacks intended to take out specific individuals (leaders or whomever) which are based on timely and unique intell (drone strikes, cruise missile strikes, whatever) might well be so effective that they continue to prevail as the primary form of "war without war" even after Obama leaves office.

But if anything, the intended effect of "winning" a war either by demoralizing the enemy or reducing his war fighting capacity to the point where he just gives up does not seem to have ever held true. As my fellow arm chair theorists have pointed out above: you cannot win wars without ground forces, though in the context of total war, all-out bombing campaigns may well be a "cost-effective" means to cause the enemy lots of grief.

I regard the ongoing "campaigns" against ISIS as largely PR campaigns, a desire to be able to point and say "We ARE doing something about it."

The societies which could put an end to Islamo-Supremacist movements simply do not have the stomach for it, as it would ultimately take decades, $trillions, substantial degrees of "savagery" which the West has still shown a reluctance to adopt, tens if not hundreds of thousands of friendly casualties and millions if not tens of millions of enemy/collateral casualties. And even then, with ~25% of humanity "vulnerable" to the allure of ideologies like ISIS (that is what 1.75 billion? . . . if only 5% are eager recruits = 87 million which was the entire population of Germany ca. Nazi era), defeating these "movements" may take centuries instead of decades, and I doubt even the most hardened Hawks are willing to commit to that.

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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
Good post, Anthropoid. +1.

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Aviation production: "In 1944 the German air force is reported to have accepted a total of 39,807 aircraft of all types -- compared with 8,295 in 1939, or 15,596 in 1942 before the plants suffered any attack." According to the report, almost none of the aircraft produced in 1944 were used in combat and some may have been imaginary.
Armoured fighting vehicle production "reached its wartime peak in December 1944, when 1,854 tanks and armored vehicles were produced. This industry continued to have relatively high production through February 1945."
Ball bearings: "There is no evidence that the attacks on the ball-bearing industry had any measurable effect on essential war production."
"Secondary Campaigns" (Operation Chastise & Operation Crossbow): "The bombing of the launching sites being prepared for the V weapons delayed the use of V-l appreciably. The attacks on the V-weapon experimental station at Peenemunde, however, were not effective; V-l was already in production near Kassel and V-2 had also been moved to an underground plant. The breaking of the Mohne and the Eder dams, though the cost was small, also had limited effect."
Steel: The bombing greatly reduced production, but the resulting shortage had no contribution to the defeat.
Consumer goods: "In the early years of the war—the soft war period for Germany—civilian consumption remained high. Germans continued to try for both guns and butter. The German people entered the period of the air war well stocked with clothing and other consumer goods. Although most consumer goods became increasingly difficult to obtain, Survey studies show that fairly adequate supplies of clothing were available for those who had been bombed out until the last stages of disorganization. Food, though strictly rationed, was in nutritionally adequate supply throughout the war. The Germans' diet had about the same calories as the British."

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ORIGINAL: Anthropoid
It may be that the present campaign against ISIS is constraining them, reducing their materiel resources and depleting their manpower, while at the same time filling them (and their would-be recruits from around the globe) with ever greater resolve to achieve their goals. Given their goals are essentially antithetical to Western life, that is a perhaps sobering point.