Not just modern war, but pretty much for most of history.
Clausewitz's maxim that "war is a continuation of policy by other means" ought to be interpreted as a reminder that war is (or at least should be) subservient to the political goals that are fueling war, and that the military needs to be a tool, not a driver, of the government's foreign policies. Sadly, not all governments do a good job of remembering this fact, and that is often where the great military failures start from.
There's companies that are researching or selling very precise indirect fire weapons. Basically, they're like the smart naval turret guns scaled down to around 20 or 30mm. You can fire a shell through a window and tell it to explode just inside. One of these on an APC, perhaps? (For all I know, these weapons were present, but the building was also fortified against them.)
These exist and are slowly becoming more mature. There was one that was tested in the early phases of what became the XM8 program in the early 2000s. So far the weapons that fire them seem to always wind up being too bulky/clunky/finicky for adoption by any military.
There's also South Korea's K11, which is the same concept as the XM29, and seems to actually be used, though I can't find much info about its effectiveness.
The conclusions from the failure of the XM29 I believe was that it isn't trivial to operate a smart grenade launcher, and the 20mm grenade doesn't have as much lethality as you would like. But perhaps the K11 was able to rectify these issues. I personally think this need for precise, powerful fires could be filled by a crew-serviced weapon mounted on an APC/IFV. Doesn't even have to be a smart grenade, could be a special autocannon or something.
And apparently there's some work being done on equipping Stryker's with the XM813, a 30mm Bushmaster autocannon that can fire programmable air bursting rounds. Which might accomplish the same thing.
There's definitely a need for armored vehicles better suited to urban combat. Maybe the Army's Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle program will provide something. I don't know much about how vehicle armor works, but maybe there's room for optimization? I mean, it's not like the enemy here is firing APFSDS rounds, or using advanced ATGMs. It's all IEDs and RPGs at close range. I know there's stuff like having a V-shaped hull improves performance against mines, and slat and cage armor to deal with explosively formed penetrator type weapons, but I wonder if there's other techniques that can produce a survivable vehicle without needing a full, 60+ ton tank
That's a luxury that you only can afford when the asymmetry of force is huge and you are going to win anyway.
>>"[..] I'm not sure that it's fair to say that the US has "won" either of the two major asymmetric wars it's been engaged"
In order to know if the US has won, we would need to know what were the goals of those wars in the first place. I'm not sure we know that.
Human wave tactics only work well if your army consists of poorly paid conscripts with no benefits, and even then they aren't terribly effective.
One of the big takeaways I got from the Ken Burns Vietnam documentary series is that it really was a war that nobody could win. The NVA was completely outmatched and would have been crushed if the US wasn't trapped behind political barriers like the 17th parallel. At the same time the US couldn't win because the South Korean government and army was hopeless. All the US could do was "accidentally" walk into ambushes and try to kill as many North Vietnamese as possible in the hope that the government would become so weak that even the South Vietnamese army could take it.
The big takeaway is never get involved with someone else's civil war.
The NVA would have been crushed if the USA crossed that barrier and nobody else get involved in the conflict. The low probability of that happening is the reason for not crossing, so, it's actually a military barrier.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers#Actual_objecti...:
"The memorandum begins by disclosing the rationale behind the bombing of North Vietnam in February 1965: The February decision to bomb North Vietnam and the July approval of Phase I deployments make sense only if they are in support of a long-run United States policy to contain China."
>>"The big takeaway is never get involved with someone else's civil war."
It seems that, more than a civil war, it has the characteristics of a proxy war.
from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers#Role_of_the_Un...
"As acknowledged by the papers: We must note that South Vietnam (unlike any of the other countries in Southeast Asia) was essentially the creation of the United States."
I agree with your "big takeaway". But the above is egregiously mistaken.
For two reasons. With Viet Nam, we're talking about a country that resisted invaders (France, China) with great tenacity and success. The North had a sense of nationhood, and favorable terrain, and a largely united political/military leadership. The US dropped more bombs on Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia than during the whole of WWII, drafted all the young men the country could stand, applied money and expertise, destroyed one if not two Presidents, and still did not come very close to winning. Hanoi and the northern mountains were never seriously threatened by US forces. One could go on.
Second reason. The US had just suffered a defeat/stalemate in Korea due to Chinese counter-invasion when it seemed the US might cross the Yalu River. The US did not want that to happen again in Viet Nam. Thus, in a very real "hard power" sense, the US did not cross the Viet Nam borders into Thailand or Laos, because of not wanting to engage China directly along a second front. This is not a political limitation, it's a very direct military limitation.
Ken Burns Vietnam documentary series was about Vietnam (1960s - 1975 ?), not the Korean War (1950 - 1953), no?
The 320,000 South Korean troops who rotated through the Vietnam War over 10+ year period were great troops according to many US veterans who were there.
And also I do not agree with the broad generalization that South Vietnamese troops were hopeless.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freedom_Deal#Cambodi...:
"U.S. bombing of Cambodia extended over the entire eastern one-half of the country and was especially intense in the heavily populated southeastern one-quarter of the country, including a wide ring surrounding the largest city of Phnom Penh. In large areas, according to maps of U.S. bombing sites, it appears that nearly every square mile of land was hit by bombs with roughly 500,000 tons of bombs dropped. [..]"
Wow, I'm very not used to reading military text. They write "a concrete-penetrating option" but they mean "we blew up the building and everybody inside it".
I truly wonder how many innocent lives could be saved if military people would start writing honestly.
> 1-68 CAB’s solution was to drop the building using the GMLRS.
It is, of course, quite possible that "drop the building" is insufficiently honest for you. I'm sure the author could have written "explosively annihilated the five-story building under construction, most likely killing any person inside or atop it". Though I confess I'm not sure what this phrasing would add that "drop the building" does not. Perhaps you can enlighten me?
In this case, the intended audience appears to be mainly subject matter experts. So they use the jargon of concrete-penetrating because that appears to be the relevant technical detail that guided the munitions choice.
It [primarily] creates an implosion, not an explosion, which is why it's such a good weapon system for reducing collateral damage in an urban warfare setting. You can level a building and barely scratch the exterior walls of the building right next to it.
EDIT: Modified the portions in square brackets. I stand corrected - there is a small explosive charge on the ends of the rockets.
That's just ridiculous. Silly and snarky. But you know that. The GP wanted honest, not more verbose; plain language that describes the reality, not pseudo-objective jargon that conceals it. What makes it horrific is that you're joking about killing lots of people.
"Drop the building" is also a euphemism, like "light up" to mean to kill. Making murder sound bland and neutral. But I suppose it must be, to the "subject matter experts".
My point being that the article is neither euphemistic nor dishonest. It is quite straightforward and clear about actions, goals, means, and expected outcomes. I understand if some people might disagree and consider the wording used to be insufficiently evocative for their own personalized interpretations of more broadly recognized vernacular.
To be clear, I am in no way, shape, or form joking about killing people. I am pointing out that the article treats the matter with gravitas.
I'm pretty sure that in a lot of cases, hitting urban area was the goal, with theories that killing civilians will help win the war.
In this case, "destroy the building" is less accurate than "drop". Their goal was complete demolition, to prevent the building from being occupied by more fighters. The intended audience of this article will understand the language clearly.
There are less-practical solutions. One could pull out the 2nd and 4th stories, like playing a game of Jenga. One could shove the whole building down by two stories, fully intact, giving it two basements.
So "drop" seems especially fitting here. The highest point needs to drop by two stories.
Once you start seeing militarese for the technical writing that it is, a lot starts to make sense. In this case, they're listing the constraints of a problem, and describing the solution that was selected. Believe it or not, the choice of ordinance in this case is called a "firing solution".
My point is this: they are writing honestly. In fact, it quite common to refer to "kills" on the radio, and in after-action reports. Where the "its dead" level of analysis suffices, the military will say "it dead".
Consider instead how many soldiers might perish if the focus shifted away from "firing solutions" and towards accurate descriptions of agony.
The former is the job of the military. The latter is the job of the journalist. Both have important roles to play, here.
btw, since we're being pedantic about terminology, it's "ordnance", not "ordinance" -- the latter means laws.
Re "firing solution", I've heard it used both in artillery (i.e.: "solution to a parabolic equation") and in a more general context of "tactical solutions". The latter might be an informal term, in US parlance, though.
People didn't die because of writing. They died because someone used the building to shoot at people and couldn't be flushed out with smaller weapons. So, the answer to your question is "probably zero"
That purpose is to hide the brutality of war, from either the writer, or the reader.
In either case, allowing to hide the brutality makes it arguably more palatable to commit it (writer) or legitimize it (reader), and therefore contributes to it.
I can’t put numbers on this, obviously, because nobody can. But just denying the argument with a sort of its-not-guns-that-kill-it’s-people-argument is intellectually dishonest.
If you insist that “dropping” is for some reason preferable to “demolish” or “collapse”, say because it’s shorter or the military has trouble spelling those actual terms, I am sure you can find me a reference in non-lethal industries involved in the destruction of construction using the term. My superficial research seems to indicate that those wielding wrecking balls instead of laser-guided missiles see no need to obfuscate their doings.
> precisely placed explosive charges dropped a 28-story building almost in its tracks.
> "It's the heaviest steel we’ve ever worked on," says Mark Loizeaux, of Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI), Towson, Md., which dropped the brick-clad structure for contractor Wells Excavating Co., Inc., Oklahoma City.
> CDI’s detonation sequence aimed to drop the building in a southerly direction in what is called a controlled progressive collapse in order to lay out the demolished structure to ease removal of debris.
> In 1975 CDI demolished a 32-story reinforced concrete building in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the only building taller than the Biltmore to be dropped with explosives
From http://www.controlled-demolition.com/travelers-building:
> Controlled Demolition Incorporated’s team was able to complete asbestos abatement/environmental remediation, prepare the structure for implosion and drop the massive structural steel building just 2 weeks
> Controlled Demolition Incorporated's DREXS (Directional Remote Explosive Severance) System sequentially severed the 4 inch thick flanges of the buildings' support columns to drop the structure without damage to a Boston Fire Department facility just 30 feet away.
Edit: to be clear, I’m against the pedantry at play here. Subject matter experts talk in their specific jargon. We do it in tech, why would the military be any different?
Second, "drop" may be colloquial but I don't see how it's disguising the action and the consequences. It seems to me there are similar objections to "demolish" - it's like a construction project, or "collapse" it's an unintentional tragedy. If I had to argue for "drop" I suspect it's advantage is that it describes how you want the building and the rubble to fall - down instead of out.
I'd be willing to consider the merits of different word choices, but what I think we should be hesitant about is drawing deep psychological conclusions from word choices that may be entirely coincidental or have a different motive than you think. E.g. "The author uses terms like 'drop' to disguise the horror of war and if such language weren't used we'd have less war." That feels like an overreach to me.
Not that the specific example is that relevant, as others have notice. I think it’s hard to deny that the military uses euphemisms: “soft targets”, “neutralize”, and “collateral damage” come to mind.
From there, it’s a small step to wonder what the intend may be. And even independent of intent (I could see an argument for using euphemisms with good intentions, or just to avoid very human emotions, much like medicine does), if that choice may still have the consequence of making difficult choices easier than they should be.
In any case, I was mostly just arguing that the idea that “language is meaningless, bombs kill people” is somewhere between ignorant and naive.
"Soft targets" include people, yes, but the term generally refers to any unhardended, unarmored, or unprotected thing.
"Neutralize" encompasses any kind of condition that removes a soldier from the battlefield, including death, injury, debilitating trauma, etc.
"Collateral damage" is similarly broad. It's any shit you didn't mean to fuck up.
No doubt these terms are used euphemistically at times. But I also can't, off the top of my head, think of any others that could directly replace them accurately and concisely, while also satisfying the demands of folks who lack the experience (or the desire perhaps) to understand their utility in context.
This is simply how military tactics and strategy are talked about in an academic sense. It might be weird to think that Military Science is an academic discipline when you're not used to talking about war all the time, but when you're at West Point you take these classes and this is the tone. It's because you're not going to stop every 5 minutes to reflect on those who died in combat -- that would be kind of crazy, and there are plenty of other contexts where the moral and ethical issues of war and combat are discussed in great depth.
To make an analogy, your comment would be like my reading a Computer Science paper about something technical and then commenting: "why is this person writing about technology in such technical terms? Is it because they don't want to confront the negative consequences of technology on our political and social fabric? Don't they care about the privacy issues?" It's kind of just a way to say that you wish they were talking about what YOU want to talk about.
How much would you reckon?
http://characterisationexplosiveweapons.org/studies/annex-a-...
9M22 ROCKET. The 9M22 is a fin-stabilised rocket with a steel high explosive fragmentation (HE-FRAG) warhead. The 9N51 warhead contains 6.4 kg of TGAF-5 explosive composition, and generates some 3,920 pre-fragmented fragments.
I would add rhe AS-11 and 12 as two more rockets with explosive warheads.
https://www.gd-ots.com/missiles-and-rockets/hydra-70-rocket-...
General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems is the system integrator of the 2.75-inch (70mm) Hydra-70 family of rockets. These rockets include unitary and cargo warheads for use against point and area targets, providing the user a lethal and lightweight weapon system with multi-mission capability. The rocket system contains three components: the MK66 MOD 4 rocket motor, one of the nine warheads, and the associated point-detonating, omni-directional, remote-set fuze(s). When these components are combined, they provide a tailor-made solution to the warfighter’s situational requirements.
I would add the now defunct Mk.4 FFAR to the list, along with others.
However, this semantic argument was in the context of a discussion about GMLRS, which - after checking - do in fact have a small explosive charge attached.
Anyway. End result is that my substantive comment about GMLRS does contain the correction. And this semantic argument seems all the more pointless now. Hence my removal of my comments.
Don't bring a sniper rifle to a combined-arms fight, I suppose. It's interesting & typical of modern war that the politics of the fight constrain the weapons choice much more than the tactical situation.