If all you have is a bomber, then everything looks like a bombing campaign
In the Second World War, missions were invented for air power in order to fit evolving capabilities, rather than the other way round. When aircraft were unable to hit anything much smaller than a city, the doctrine of ‘strategic bombing to break civilian morale’ was thought up. It didn’t work. Everyone knows that being bombed only increases one’s own side’s will to fight, but then again, people are extraordinarily unwilling to accept that the enemy has the same psychology as oneself. When accuracy improved, we started hearing about the ‘surgical strike’ that would win wars with little expenditure of blood and treasure. This is believed in, not because it works, but because a belligerent who is unwilling to shed his own blood, but still wants to win his wars, while at the same time kidding himself about being humane to the enemy, is strictly obliged to believe in some such kind of magic bullet.
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