[rtkwe]

Well it's also that WW2 was the last time the US fought a peer adversary so we don't have current data on what the ratios look like and I think technology is going to further compound the idea of a simple ratio. Man portable antitank and antiair like we're seeing in Ukraine make it harder to press air or armor superiority.

[ISL]

It seems like the lesson we might be learning here is that more of the heavy lifting in conventional combat will now by done by precision weapons -- cruise missiles, drones, self-targeting artillery rounds, etc.

In recent wars, the emphasis on precision has been highlighted toward avoiding civilian casualties. The thing I hadn't fully appreciated is that in all-out conventional warfare, that same property makes weapons far more effective and efficient. A drone that can carefully drop a hand grenade into a trench can be more effective than an artillery unit walking salvos across the terrain near the trench.

In the long run, the ratios will probably turn out to be roughly the same as they have always been, for combatants with equal technology. Properly accounting for asymmetric technology, however, is apt to be quite challenging.

Unfortunately, none of these innovations intrinsically make war any less horrible.

[philipkglass]

In recent wars, the emphasis on precision has been highlighted toward avoiding civilian casualties. The thing I hadn't fully appreciated is that in all-out conventional warfare, that same property makes weapons far more effective and efficient.

The "reduced civilian casualties" angle gets emphasis in the popular press. On the military side, precision weapons were developed for greater combat effectiveness.

See for example this 2010 article from Air Force Magazine, "The Emergence of Smart Bombs":

https://www.airforcemag.com/article/0310bombs/

It recounts how hundreds of Vietnam War sorties with "dumb" bombs by the Americans failed to take down a sturdy Vietnamese bridge that was ultimately destroyed by one sortie with laser-guided bombs. That enormous increase in danger to designated targets was the main point of guidance. The reduction of danger to untargeted nearby terrain was just the happy corollary.

Quoting the above article:

“For point targets and in good weather conditions, these weapons had nearly a single-shot kill probability,” said Gen. William W. Momyer, former commander of 7th Air Force, in his book Airpower in Three Wars. “If the target could be seen and the target was vulnerable to the explosive power of the weapon, the probability of damage with a single weapon was 80 to 90 percent.”

In the first three months of Linebacker, the Air Force destroyed more than 100 bridges with precision-guided munitions. An Air Force study found that laser-guided bombs were “100 to 200 times as effective as conventional bombs against very hard targets and 20 to 40 times more effective against soft and area targets.”

In terms of combat effectiveness it was like turning a single bomber into a whole bomber squadron.