But where the contradiction lies comes from the fact that the fundamental objective of any military is ultimately in increasing its ability to wage war and defeat other existing militaries. Such an objective is necessarily orthogonal to “saving civilian lives” unless you define only a subset of humanity to be the civilian lives you wish to save treating those outside as expendable. Disregarding how illogical and frankly inhumane in my opinion it is in arbitrarily choosing to delineate people like this, even in purely pragmatic and economic terms, it makes no sense. War is a zero sum game no matter how much you can optimize it such that the least amount of lives are taken in doing so.
The result of a use in military force is always ultimately the destruction of something which if not treated through other diplomatic means will escalate to larger and larger conflicts until at some point, nothing is left. Be very wary of those who tell you that the work you are doing is only to decrease casualty rates and save lives because that same reduction can and will be used to justify an increased usage of military force because of that very newly lowered rate.
Instead of working to increase the effectiveness and lethality of militaries, why not choose to spend your energy on trying to find ways to make it easier and more effective to resolving conflict by other diplomatic means? If such a belief is idealistic in today’s world, perhaps it is. But I believe there exists a future where such a world is possible if we only choose to not immediately give in to the cynicism of that other belief.
Civilian casualties in current conflicts are at an all time low because of advancements in military technology and capabilities.
We used to wipe whole cities, we don’t do that today.
The effectiveness and lethality of a military dies directly to its ability to maintain peace, we have had the ability to blow each other up 10000 times over yet are living in the most peaceful time in history.
Yes there is a bunch of crap going on that ideally should not be, but that is a matter of policy not capabilities.
The British didn't bomb Germany in any significant way until after the Battle of Britain. This wasn't some moral decision or anything - they didn't have a bomber with the range to attack Germany until the Lancaster[1] which flew in 1941. The Germans occupied France and the Netherlands which let them attack Britain much easier.
The Battle of Britain (when the Germans were bombing Britain) finished in 1940[2].
It's true that the German campaign against factories (and airfields) was effective and their switch to bombing cities allowed the RAAF to survive as a fighting force.
Have you seen Aleppo?
People always seem so resigned and certain in their beliefs that warfare and killing are inevitable and impossible to avoid. It always strikes me as almost irrational in a way, or perhaps it’s a sort of sunk cost fallacy wherein once you’ve committed to military conflict, it’s extremely difficult to go back on it as that would require admitting the already existing destruction and death that has accumulated was all for nothing. And so to protect themselves from such a truth, they continue the cycle of death and destruction knowingly or unknowingly acting to condemn their children to the same fate.
Thus the resignation of fate, giving up, and falling into an endless cycle of destruction with which the second paragraph consists of. What parts do you find vague?
Precision is a numbers game. It doesn't feature human selective bias.