Are air bombings ineffective?

[hadberz]

Bombing is very effective with the proper intel and a ROI. I wrote out some more, but it was getting into the politics. So I'll just say this, there are essentially 3 sides. So it's political. Also, as has been mentioned it takes infantry to win wars.

Disclaimer:

I am bias since I am retired Air Force.

[Jagdtiger14]

Are air bombings effective? Too bad you cant ask Mr Rudel that question, but you already know his answer. Take a look at the first Persian Gulf War (road to Basra as the extreme modern example).

The problem comes in when politics rears its ugly head and gets in the way of the war fighters. Absurd rules of engagement for example. The over-concern about civilian deaths, which in turn makes human shields a tactic. The Russians for example effectively prepared the Aleppo battlefield I'm sure with no regard to civilian deaths. And now the Syrian army is ready to push in also with no regard to civilian deaths.

The civilians remaining in Aleppo knew what was coming. They had a lot of chances to get out. Kinda like Berlin '45...except worse...they had no "glorious" leader to believe in for their suicide.

Sorry to say this, but the Russians are doing it right. Political rules of engagement make it seem as "air bombings" are ineffective.

[MrsWargamer]

Today's bombs are smart as hell, but unfortunately the limitations make them as pointless as hell.

In WW2 you weren't aiming at groups of people, you were aiming at entire countries.

I'm sure if you flew 100 modern bombers over a location with someone like ISIS in it and merely aimed at the centre of the target you'd kill off ISIS right quickly. But the target would be utterly flattened and there'd be little if anything living anywhere near the target.

I recall what Caen looked like when it was 'liberated'. But you still have to occupy the ruins.

[sullafelix]

Had the British quickly followed up the massive bombing of Caen they could have swept the dazed SS defenders aside.

Yes, ground troop are always needed to occupy.

The OPs question is bombing effective can be answered with a resounding yes.

[Kuokkanen]

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.

"Deaths of few is tragedy. Deaths of many is statistics."

[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.

[Chickenboy]

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.

Good post, Anthropoid. +1.

[Anthropoid]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
Good post, Anthropoid. +1.

Thanks Chickenboy, however I should correct my (apparently) somewhat inaccurate claims about the overall conclusions of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey having been 'meh.' At least if we consider the consensus reached on the pages of Wikipedia to be sufficiently reliable--which I think it often is, and sometimes is not.

Wikipedia, for all its shortcomings never ceases to amaze. If nothing else that fact that it seems to be always growing; I do not recall this summary page existing before when I set out to familiarize myself with that report. Not that I've read the whole "several thousand pages(!?!)" but I do recall skimming through a PDF copy of one of the summary sections.

The bullet section down the wiki page a bit is particularly instructive as it outlines major areas of "Failure" and "Success" and here I can take some edification that my overall impression from memory is valid as, there were significant elements of German industry where strategic bombing failed to have any real impact.

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."

As others have pointed out above, the scale of the strategic bombing campaigns in WWII or Vietnam were much larger than the present campaigns against ISIS, and of course many operational factors are tremendously different. I suppose the safest conclusion from history is: its complicated, and even when strategic bombing is effective, it may only be of limited effectiveness.

One last point worth mentioning, if memory serves, the section of this massive survey I paid the most attention to was the part about "breaking the will to fight" and the conclusion here was that the effect was not only zero but may well have (for a period of time) increased the solidarity, resourcefulness and resolve of the population to fight and win. The German bombing campaign against England certainly seems to have had that effect.

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.

[MrsWargamer]

I think it is a good thing no one has yet to ever do the things I have in the past pondered due to the largely inhuman methodology I have pondered.

We could wipe out all life in some places and thus wipe out the defending targets. But it would require uncivilized ideas that are only possible in a game like Civilization (ironic considering the name of the game).

[Chickenboy]

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.

I've read a number of texts on the American European bombing campaign of the Second World War. Without belaboring the points, I think 'meh' (shrugs shoulders) is an apt description.

It had its successes, most certainly. Particularly against the German synthetic fuel plants later in the war. When our heavy bombers were focused on a particular industry (that was critical-not ball bearings that are a fungible commodity), that industry could be made to feel pain. Same for rail yards, marshaling centers, etc.

When frittered hither and yon, the heavy bomber force was less effective. Particularly questionable was the notion of breaking the enemy will to fight. History will show that was largely rubbish.

I think the current bombing campaign against ISIS is constraining them to an extent. It's likely had an impact on their income streams (small scale oil smuggling and refining) and attritted some front-line artillery, C&C and other targets of tactical importance.

The unpleasant and unspoken fact is that we ("the West") just really don't care all that much about ISIS. If we *really* believed that this movement was an intrinsic threat to our long-term well being, a so-called existential threat, we would act accordingly. Raqqa could easily be turned into a glass-lined self-lighting incandescent cinder within about 15 minutes. Ditto Mosul. Several thousand times over.

The bombing campaign against ISIS currently is parsimonious, tic-tac and small scale. Because that's how much we really care. I don't think you can draw grand conclusions from this like the OP about the overall effectiveness of air power.

[Poopyhead]

The air war against the Islamic State is politically effective. The President has stated publicly at least twice that he doesn't have a plan to defeat the IS, with air power or otherwise. This Administration will continue to report launching hundreds of air strikes and skip the part where most do not even engage the enemy due to possible civilian casualties. The strategy so far is that the IS takes a city, loots the banks, butchers non-Sunnis, enslaves the women and destroys historical and religious shrines. We bomb the city until the Iraqi forces with the help of the Administration's new friend Iran (the #1 state sponsor of terror) can retake it. Then the IS takes another city and the strategy continues.

We are supposed to be saving the people of Syria and Iraq from about 30k IS combatants. If this force occupied Hawaii, no one would advocate sending in 100 B-52s to bomb the state flat. This is really not an option. Short of that, surgical air strikes to slowly wear down the IS are severely hampered. If we blow up oil wells that provide the enemy with black market petro-dollars, then we create an environmental disaster. Our own intel people have reported that when we bomb one IS commander, then he is rapidly replaced with another thug who is even more brutal in order to justify his promotion. These air strikes to prune IS leaders are simply using Darwinism to evolve the most brutal IS leadership and otherwise have little effect. Indescriminately bombing populated areas with the reasoning that some IS fighters would be killed along with the civilians would recruit more fanatics than we would remove. Remember that the citizens of Aleppo are rebels as far as Assad is concerned. That's why the Russian bombing strategy makes no distinction about the civilians. This is an autocracy making an example to coerce other rebel cities to submit. The Assad regime is essentially a death cult, survive or die, with no concern for long term consequences.

Overall, if IS combatants are using mortars to win a battle and tactical airpower can take out the mortars, then airpower is immediately effective...as long as friendly ground troops win said battle. I told my soldiers a quarter century ago that Iraq would eventually become Little Iran, Sunniland and Kurdistan. This is essentially the case now. Shiite forces aren't going to die to liberate Sunnis. The Kurds our bombers are helping fight IS terror are also being bombed by our NATO ally Turkey because they are a base for Kurdish terrorists in that country. Sunnis are most likely not going to get much help from us, because the Administration's new friend Iran wouldn't want that. Thus airpower cannot be militarily effective without a combined arms strategy for victory. Syria and Iraq are failed states where IS bases can train recruits that have already spread cells to many other countries in the region. These cells will exploit the continuing chaos of the "Arab Spring" to gain new bases and more recruits. Bombing Syria and Iraq won't affect that.

[Kuokkanen]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

When frittered hither and yon, the heavy bomber force was less effective. Particularly questionable was the notion of breaking the enemy will to fight. History will show that was largely rubbish.

So Japan didn't throw the towel becouse it lost will to fight by (nuclear) bombings of the Superfortresses?

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: Matti Kuokkanen

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

When frittered hither and yon, the heavy bomber force was less effective. Particularly questionable was the notion of breaking the enemy will to fight. History will show that was largely rubbish.

So Japan didn't throw the towel becouse it lost will to fight by (nuclear) bombings of the Superfortresses?

Ultimately, Japan lost the will to fight because it had been beaten (badly) and was shown clear and present indications that the beatings would go on until the end. These beat-downs took the form of the liquidation of their fleet, loss of 'home' territory on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, loss of their far-flung Imperial grabbings in the DEI, the firebombing of their cities and factories and the novelty of the Soviets entering the war against them in late 1945. The Atomic bombs were a part of that endgame.

Delivery of the Atomic bombs would have been impossible without capturing ground (the Marianas) the 'hard way'. But I believe that Atomic bombs, while necessary additive parts, were insufficient for the surrender of the Japanese taken individually.

Mostly my critique was regarding the strategic bombing campaign in Europe. The vindictive nature of much of the city firebombing campaign relied heavily on an assumption that burning out major population centers would decrease the resolve of the civilians and military forces on the German side. While it was an interesting theory, it has been put to bed.

'Terror bombing' campaigns, be they 'The Blitz', Allied firestorms over the Reich or Zeppelin attacks over London are probably not worth the expenditure of men and material if one's stated goal is demoralization and capitulation.

[TulliusDetritus]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

Mostly my critique was regarding the strategic bombing campaign in Europe. The vindictive nature of much of the city firebombing campaign relied heavily on an assumption that burning out major population centers would decrease the resolve of the civilians and military forces on the German side. While it was an interesting theory, it has been put to bed.

The firebombing or (British) carpet bombing was not necessarily vindictive. Actually, if you want to destroy an industrial state (as in WW2) you have two options:

a) you hit the target (American doctrine in Europe)
b) you carpet bomb the whole thing (British doctrine -and American in the Pacific) thus disrupting workers' lives = destruction of homes, public transport, roads, water, sewers, heat, electricity etcetera etcetera etcetera. An indirect approach that is.

Given that a postwar survey proved few bombs actually hit the target (less than 25% or even less than that, I just can't remember), the indirect approach was perhaps more effective.

Also note that the "precise" daily bombing in fact was carpet bombing (misses that is) the industrial districts, in the end sort of achieving b) [:D]

Which is why I asked on my first post "define target". You can miss a key industrial plant but if you disrupt the workers's (of that factory) lives, you are in fact achieving similar results [:)]

[Anthropoid]

ORIGINAL: Poopyhead

The air war against the Islamic State is politically effective. The President has stated publicly at least twice that he doesn't have a plan to defeat the IS, with air power or otherwise. This Administration will continue to report launching hundreds of air strikes and skip the part where most do not even engage the enemy due to possible civilian casualties. The strategy so far is that the IS takes a city, loots the banks, butchers non-Sunnis, enslaves the women and destroys historical and religious shrines. We bomb the city until the Iraqi forces with the help of the Administration's new friend Iran (the #1 state sponsor of terror) can retake it. Then the IS takes another city and the strategy continues.

We are supposed to be saving the people of Syria and Iraq from about 30k IS combatants. If this force occupied Hawaii, no one would advocate sending in 100 B-52s to bomb the state flat. This is really not an option. Short of that, surgical air strikes to slowly wear down the IS are severely hampered. If we blow up oil wells that provide the enemy with black market petro-dollars, then we create an environmental disaster. Our own intel people have reported that when we bomb one IS commander, then he is rapidly replaced with another thug who is even more brutal in order to justify his promotion. These air strikes to prune IS leaders are simply using Darwinism to evolve the most brutal IS leadership and otherwise have little effect. Indescriminately bombing populated areas with the reasoning that some IS fighters would be killed along with the civilians would recruit more fanatics than we would remove. Remember that the citizens of Aleppo are rebels as far as Assad is concerned. That's why the Russian bombing strategy makes no distinction about the civilians. This is an autocracy making an example to coerce other rebel cities to submit. The Assad regime is essentially a death cult, survive or die, with no concern for long term consequences.

Overall, if IS combatants are using mortars to win a battle and tactical airpower can take out the mortars, then airpower is immediately effective...as long as friendly ground troops win said battle. I told my soldiers a quarter century ago that Iraq would eventually become Little Iran, Sunniland and Kurdistan. This is essentially the case now. Shiite forces aren't going to die to liberate Sunnis. The Kurds our bombers are helping fight IS terror are also being bombed by our NATO ally Turkey because they are a base for Kurdish terrorists in that country. Sunnis are most likely not going to get much help from us, because the Administration's new friend Iran wouldn't want that. Thus airpower cannot be militarily effective without a combined arms strategy for victory. Syria and Iraq are failed states where IS bases can train recruits that have already spread cells to many other countries in the region. These cells will exploit the continuing chaos of the "Arab Spring" to gain new bases and more recruits. Bombing Syria and Iraq won't affect that.

Well said Poopyhead +1. Its not easy, and certainly not as rosy as the politicians seem to like to imply. Just once, I'd like to hear one of them say "Well this whole thing is a real shit swirl and there really isn't squat we can do about it unless the majority of citizens in the West are ready to commit to decades of all out war and occupation . . ." I suppose there is one candidate who might be so glib . . . if he wasn't ranting about building walls [:D]

One question though: do you reckon that the "30,000" combatants figure is accurate? There seems to be a huge range in those estimates and given what I know about the demographics of the Sunni world (mostly isolated pockets who feel they are under siege by either the West or Shia, and with disproportionate numbers of younger and disenfranchised people [most notably the ones with testicles dangling between their legs]) I would think that IS would be pretty appealing to a sizeable fraction of that population, which makes me willing to consider the higher estimates as having some plausibility.

Can intell methods produce decent empirical estimates on these sorts of things? I find that surprising, given there are covert IS cells [tiny perhaps, but they must have sizeable numbers of "collaborators" supporting them in some communities?] apparently operating throughout many nations.

[Poopyhead]

Joby Warrick, the author of "Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS", uses that figure of actual combatants on the ground in IS territoy. I saw him on CSPAN describing his book as a history of ISIS, so I feel comfortable echoing 30k. Most of the world's population don't really care about the West, because people in the West don't care about them. The IS uses social media extremely well to give Sunnis a reason to hate us. The scolar Baghdadi in particular uses hadiths to justify the brutality of the IS. They even have apps for accessing IS propoganda on iPhones. In Asymmetric War, the child you give humanitarian relief today may be tomorrow's terrorist.

[Jim D Burns]

Ever since the political cease fire ended the fighting in Korea without actually ending the war, war has changed for the west. Today every war is a war of political rules imposed on our fighting men and we basically cannot win our wars because of them.

When the enemy knows you're not allowed to do x because of a politicians fear of voters, then the enemy will use x against you. And our enemies have been using x to survive and defeat us for the past 60-70 years.

Until the west learns to take the gloves off again in war the way we did in WWII, we will always lose our wars.

Because of our politically imposed rules, the only way our overwhelming air forces can be used to any effect is with men on the ground designating targets. And we know rule y won't allow that due to some politicians fears...

Jim

[charlie0311]

Hi Jim, your stuff is spot on. There is more,ie, the influence of the mass media and popular culture on the voters. Then the state of the culture itself, basically disintegrating right before our eyes.

I know this is political, Erik/Ian you guys could just ban the flammers not the entire subject.

[fvianello]

Strategic Bombing, not to be confused with Close Air Support, is not particularly effective in asymmetric conflicts and COIN operations.

During Vietnam war, it was decently effective against NVA but totally useless against Vietcongs. Same in Afghanistan, where Soviets planes bombed the Mujahideen for 10 years without any result.

In a symmetric conflict, it was and would still be lethal. Good examples are Desert Storm 1 & 2.

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: HanBarca

Strategic Bombing, not to be confused with Close Air Support, is not particularly effective in asymmetric conflicts and COIN operations.

During Vietnam war, it was decently effective against NVA but totally useless against Vietcongs. Same in Afghanistan, where Soviets planes bombed the Mujahideen for 10 years without any result.

In a symmetric conflict, it was and would still be lethal. Good examples are Desert Storm 1 & 2.

Again, spot on mate. [&o]