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by StavrosK 1833 days ago
And if fewer weddings get blown up, we'll use them more and more to kill people. I wonder whether the absolute number of killings will go up or down this way.
1 comments

Wait, why will we use them more and more to kill people if fewer weddings get blown up? I'm not seeing the causal link.
If they're accurate (or more accurate) then there's less resistance to using them more. They will be used to target an increasingly large number of people (or individuals) with a kind of specificity that present weapon systems cannot be used for and which impedes their use in some cases (because of the risk of collateral damage or the political fallout from a recent incident of bombing a wedding party).
The RAF's Brimstone missile is in big demand for airstrikes because it has much lower collateral damage than the bigger Hellfire and Maverick missiles that allies use. This has actually spurred its use; the number of strikes actually went up.
I think they are suggesting current usage is limited by political fallout due to the misidentification rate.

They hypothesize reducing the misidentification rate will increase the usage rate, ultimately killing more people (but fewer wedding parties)

The pentagon literally have lawyers that designate an acceptable amount of civilian casualties a general can risk to take out a given target. With more precise weaponry theyll be able to get under the threshold much more frequently.
Because blowing up weddings leads to dissatisfied voters, so politicians are less likely to do that very often.