Question

What has changed in terms of bombing since the end of World War Two up to our war on terrorism?

Answer 1

"Since the end of World War II, each administration has sought to develop and perfect a reliable set of executive institutions to manage national security policy, and tried to install a policy-making and coordination system that reflected each President’s personal management style.

Answer 2

In terms of bombing, WW2 used massive bomber squadrons to decimate the enemy. Hundreds of bombers would blanket an area with explosives to annihilate factories, weapon depots, enemy positions...you name it. Even firebombing was used to terrorize enemy cities into forcing their government to sue for peace.

Since then, however, concept of bombing has changed dramatically because of the nature of the enemy in terms of terrorism. Terrorists don't have massive factory complexes, titanic bases, or established areas of control using armies. They also like to use civilian areas as shields making WW2 bombing highly impractical unless you want to kill a lot of innocent people just to get that one house filled with bad guys.

Instead, precision bombing has become far more important in order to limit casualties and pinpoint an enemy that operates either individually or in very small groups. The use of precision and guided bombs had proved to be more important than the kind of carpet bombing used in WW2. WW2 bombing tactics just wouldn't work in fighting terrorists today.

Answer 3

Bombing has changed in two ways, one technological, one social. Technologically, the replacement of the "dumb" bomb with the "smart" or guided bomb is the most important. In the Second World War, it was rarely possibel to guarantee that a bomb would hit closer than 200 yards to its intended target. Modern guided munitions can hit within inches. That profoundly changes when you can use bombs, the expected results, and the expectations of your command and civilian government of how much civilian and collateral damage you're allowed to do.

The second change is a pendulum swing back and forth. Before the Second World War, the idea of aerial bombing on civilian targets was widely abhorred. Picasso's "Guernica" was a passionate protest against the inhumanity (as it was seen at the time) of the Nazi's bombing from the air of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, widely considered a war crime at the time (the late 30s). And yet, by the late 40s, near the end of the Second World War, the United States felt morally free to firebomb Tokyo -- to deliberate start a massive firestorm that would destroy the city and directly kill more than 100,000 civilians, men, women, old people, children and babies included. Few people in the US at the time questioned the morality of that act. (Ironically, far more questioned the morality of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, which killed fewer and less horrifically.)

In the 50s it was simply accepted that a major part -- indeed, with nuclear weapons, arguably the most important part -- of any future major conflict would involve relatively indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets. That is, instead of trying to destroy the enemies armed forces in the field, the goal of modern warfare would become trying to annihilate the enemies' *civilian* industrial infrastructure (and many of its workers and citizens), and the fact that this meant the wholescale slaughter of defenseless noncombatants was just an unfortunate and necessary side-effect.

Now, however, with the advent of "smart" munitions, not to mention considerably greater electronic intelligence, the pendulum has swung back, and we once again find it loathsome for an armed force to inflict civilian casualties a a by-product of its attempt to attack its armed enemies. It becomes "bad press" for the Americans to blow up a village hut in Afghanistan that contains 12 Taliban fighters if it also kills 5 of their wives and children. People say: you can target better than that -- why didn't you? That question would not have been asked at any time between 1940 and 1990, roughly. Before 1940 it would not have been considered ethical to even fight anywhere except a clearly indicaed "war zone."