I just wanted to do a little ‘back of the envelope” comparison between these two air campaigns. In the case of Kosovo, if you believe the casualty figures provided virtue of Wikipedia (which are not always incorrect), they flew 38,004 sorties and killed 956 supposed hostiles (that is 956 killed, 5,173 wounded and 52 missing for a total of 6,181 casualties). Or, maybe that should be 10,484 “strike sorties.” Regardless, this was either 38 sorties per person killed or 10 “strike sorties” per person killed (missing are counted among the killed for this calculation). Or if based on total casualties, 6 sorties per casualty or 1.7 “strike sorties” per casualty. Now, only 35% of the bombs and missiles used were precision guided.
If you look at the link in my post “Bleeding an Insurgency to Death” you could surmise that in 2015 in Iraq and Syria, the U.S. and its allies dropped 28,714 “munitions.” They claim 25,500 killed. This is 1.13 “munitions dropped” per person claimed killed. So, one bomb kills one person.
Kosovo was 23,614 “air munitions” for 1,008 deaths or 6,181 casualties. This is 23 “air munitions” per person killed or 3.8 “air munitions” per casualty. So, Kosovo in 1999 is 23.42 ‘air munitions” per person killed while Syria and Iraq in 2015 is 1.13 “munitions dropped” per person claimed killed. This is an effectiveness improvement of over 20 times! Of course, these campaigns were conducted against different terrain and somewhat different circumstances that may favor one over the other. We have not evaluated those factors (after all, this is just “back-of-the-envelope” calculations).
Now, in Kosovo, only 35% of the bombs and missiles used were precision guided. Don’t know what the figure is now, but if it was 100%, and if we assumed that only the precision guided munitions in Kosovo hit anything (a questionable assumption), then we still end up with an effectiveness improvement of over seven times.
But maybe the 25,500 killed really means 25,500 killed and wounded (of which the majority would be wounded). In that case using the Kosovo figures for total casualties you end up with 3.82 “air munitions” per casualty versus 1.13 “munitions dropped” per casualty for Syria and Iraq. Again, if we completely discount the effectiveness of non-precision guided munitions in Kosovo, and assume that in Syria and Iraq 100% of the munitions are precision guided, then we end up with similar levels of effectiveness per casualty (1.34 “air munitions” versus 1.13 “munitions dropped” per casualty). There are a lot of “ifs” to get to this point.
Now, one should not put to much stock in the “back of the envelope” calculations, but something doesn’t quite line up here.
