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Comment by clSTophEjUdRanu | Hacker News Reader

I know this is still a weapon but it's surprising the lengths we go to in order to minimize civilian suffering.

I just got finished watching The World at War series. During WWII there was routinely air raids that would kill 20,000+ people. Tokyo firebombing killed 100,000+

War is still bad but I'm glad I don't have to live thru that.

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I don't think it's quite so altruistic. Militaries are systematically moving to smaller, more precise munitions across the board. If they're smaller and smarter you need A)fewer of them for a given mission and B)can carry more of them, therefore being able to complete more missions, on any given launch platform. A B-29 can carry max 20,000lbs of ordinance but with no precision so at most it can kill one factory or depot. Hypothetically, the same aircraft carrying a max load of GBU-53/B StormBreaker small diameter smart bombs would be able to destroy a hundred factories and installations in one flight.

Killing people is also a good way to create more enemies, which a.) you then have to dispatch and b.) have a chance of killing you. There are very large second-order efficiencies to creating weapons that only kill those who pose an immediate threat to you and minimize collateral damage. Remember that the military operates as an extension of larger foreign policy goals, and it's far more efficient to never create an enemy in the first place than it is to get rid of them.

(Sometimes I wish world leaders would realize this, but a lot of foreign policy isn't actually about advancing a nation's strategic goals, it's about providing an outlet for aggressive tribal emotions that are usually suppressed within the population.)

Minimizing casualties is typically the first priority in any combat engagement.

People like to point at very publicised situations where things went horribly wrong or there were major breakdowns in good order that led to those considerations being ignored. However if you dig deeper there will typically be major investigations (which is BTW how these Incidents come out usually) and severe punishments, not to mention all the follow on effects for the rest of the force like increased training in Laws of armed conflict etc...

The cynic/realist would say its not minimizing casualties but minimizing negative effects of casualties.

That nowadays is necessary to win a war because society doesn’t accept as much suffering from both own and enemy forces and civilians as it used to. The USA got out of Vietnam because of lack of home support and decreased morale of its soldiers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Collapsing_U.S._mo...), not because of the enemy’s strength.

As a former USMC grunt with multiple combat deployments this is spot on.

I try cutting slack here or on Reddit but most of the time when these topics come up you can tell nobody has any clue what war is like.

BTW makes me wonder when people will start watching the documentary on the Syrian civil war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_civil_war (it's live on the middle east section of the news)

(people still live thru that)

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