From Strategic Bombing to Targeted Killing: Precision

Strategic Bombing for the United States began before World War II, supposedly the U.S. intended to employ precision strategic bombing to erode an adversary’s capability and will to fight.  During the theory’s first test in World War II the strategy failed to achieve its goals, but this failure did not stop the U.S. from continuing to improve precision throughout the rest of the Twentieth Century.  Fifty years after World War II, the tactic of precision bombing improved to the point where precision strategic bombing not only shortened the First Gulf War (1991), but won a war without ground troops (Operation Deliberate Force – 1999).  After the turn of the century, a change in national strategy evolved precision strategic bombing against state infrastructure to the Targeted Killing of persons of power in non-state entities.  Targeted Killing required the precision technologies, equipment, targeting methodologies, and intelligence developed over the course of seventy years to perfect, some of which continue to approve in the current environment. 

            This study attempts to find the empirical evidence answering the question of how Precision Strategic Bombing evolved into Targeted Killing?  To answer this question, several subordinate questions require answers, and in the process explained, to determine the linkage between the two strategic tactics.  First, the theory of precision strategic bombing must be understood.  Initially described during World War I by Edgar S. Gorrell, precision strategic bombing sought to destroy key chemical facilities supporting the Germany war effort.[1]  The plan created at least one detractor in the form of Newton D. Baker, the Secretary of War, who cautioned against “terror bombing” against civilians citing long-standing U.S. religious and humanitarian ideals.[2]  From the beginning, the U.S. appears to have constrained its war strategies to the ideal of precision, striking the right target to end combat without causing collateral damage or civilian casualties.  Therefore, woven throughout this work is an attempt to find and explain the difference between a moral imperative and military expediency as applied to strategic bombing. 

            The attempt to prevent “terror bombing” led to the development of a targeting strategy built upon key industrial nodes important to the conduct of war.  During the interregnum, U.S. theorists developed the theory of the industrial web – an interconnectedness of disparate industries—which with a key element removed brought many industries to a halt and forcing an adversary state to capitulate.  World War II proved the concept a failure for many reasons, but this failure did not stop the pursuit of precision.  The Korean War witnessed almost no change in the application of strategic bombing beyond defining “military necessity.”[3]  Vietnam witnessed several improvements in technologies, employment, and effects.  These improvements culminated many years later, and provide a tale of the improved precision and accuracy technology behind both tactical and strategic bombing.  In the course of providing evidence for this technological improvement is an anticipated answer to the second subordinate question: why did the U.S. pursue precision in the face of repeated failure? 

            With the improvements in technology, the targeting process must be described, the backbone of any precision strike.  The third answer describes the development of the targeting methodologies, including several supporting questions like: how targets are chosen; how targets are struck; and when targets are struck.  These supporting questions provide evidence for progression in both a norm against civilian casualties and collateral damage, but also provide several of the constraints the U.S. placed upon its military in pursuit of precision bombing. 

            The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh subordinate questions all seek answers to the legal constructs put in place.  Many of these legal constraints come from international conventions, some existed even before aerial bombardment became a practice.[4]  Therefore, some historical research must answer what is the basis for these legal constructs?  Does avoiding civilian casualties and collateral damage meet the evolving legal constructs over time?  Does both precision strategic bombing and Targeted Killing meet these legal constructs?  And, did these legal constructs create a norm for the U.S. to avoid civilian casualties and collateral damage?  Or, as Secretary Baker implied, did a norm already exist based upon the U.S.’s long-held religious beliefs and humanitarian tradition?  One hopes that Secretary Baker is correct and that a moral imperative based upon the U.S.’s value system drove the pursuit of precision, and that Targeted Killing is simply the next step in employing precision bombing to achieve national strategic goals.  The evidence collected and analyzed should show whether that over-arching question can be answered, but the overall goal of this work remains telling the story of the evolution of precision strategic bombing into Targeted Killing.

            To do so, a qualitative military history shall be created tracing the connection between the two tactics: precision strategic bombing and Targeted Killing.  Tracing this hundred-year history employs evidence collected from archives, congressional documents, military manuals, military school records, general officer collections, and reports from the military-industrial complex companies supporting precision’s development.  Thus far no scholar has tied the two tactics together as an evolution in military tactics.  The two subjects have been combined for at least one symposium conducted in 2014.[5]  With this work, the two tactics shall be fully linked through the common use of precision and the attempt to remain in adherence through both legal and normative means.  As a former military officer involved in the targeted process and witnessing the constraints placed upon the military to prevent civilian casualties and collateral damage some anecdotal evidence (and upon approval, oral interviews) may be employed to reinforce the conclusions the evidence dictates. 

[1] Edgar S, Gorrell, “Strategical Bombardment Memorandum, 28 November 1917,” (repr. in Maurer Maurer, The U.S. Air Service in World War I, Volume II: Early Concepts of Military Aviation, 141-151), 142.

[2] Alfred F. Hurley, Billy Micthell: Crusader for Air Power (New York: Franklin Watts, 1964), 37; Isaac D. Levine, Mitchell, Pioneer of Air Power (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1943), 37; Thomas H. Greer, “The Development of Air Doctrine in the Army Air Arm, 1917-1941” (Air Force Historical Study, 1955 repr. Washington, DC: Air Force History Office, 1985): 14-15.

[3] Matthew Evangelista and Henry Shue, eds, The American Way of Bombing: Changing Ethical and Legal Norms, from Flying Fortresses to Drones (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), 69.

[4] Russel J. Parkinson, “Aeronautics at the Hague Conference of 1899,” Airpower Historian 7, no.2 (April 1960): 109, and James Brown Scott, ed., The Hague Conventions and Declarations of 1899 and 1907 (London: Oxford University Press, 1915): 220-221, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=aeu.ark:/13960/t1mg8wg4g&seq=1.

[5] Matthew Evangelista and Henry Shue, eds, The American Way of Bombing: Changing Ethical and Legal Norms, from Flying Fortresses to Drones (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014).