In August 1941, the British government received a very unwelcome piece of analysis from an economist named David Miles Bensusan-Butt. A careful review of photographs suggested that the Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command was having trouble hitting targets in Germany and France; in fact, only one in three pilots who claimed to have attacked the targets seemed to have dropped their bombs within five miles of the sites. The Butt report is a landmark in the history of “bomb damage assessment,” or, as we now call it, “battle damage assessment.”
1941年8月，英国政府对一位名叫David Miles Bensusan-Butt的经济学家进行了非常不受欢迎的分析。对照片的仔细审查表明，皇家空军的轰炸机司令部在德国和法国遇到目标很难。实际上，声称攻击目标的三分之一的飞行员似乎在距离地点五英里之内将炸弹丢了。对接报告是“炸弹伤害评估”史上的地标，或者正如我们现在所说的“战斗损害评估”。
This recondite term has come back into public usage because of the dispute over the effectiveness of the June 22 American bombing of three Iranian nuclear facilities. President Donald Trump said that American bombs had “obliterated” the Iranian nuclear program. A leaked preliminary assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency on June 24 said that the damage was minimal. Whom to believe? Have the advocates of bombing again overpromised and underdelivered?
由于6月22日美国对三个伊朗核设施的爆炸案的有效性，这个重建的任期已经恢复了公开使用。唐纳德·特朗普总统说，美国炸弹已经“毁灭”了伊朗核计划。国防情报机构于6月24日对泄露的初步评估说，损害很小。相信谁？轰炸的倡导者是否再次过度宣传和解释不足？
Some history is in order here, informed by a bit of personal experience. From 1991 to 1993 I ran the U.S. Air Force’s study of the first Gulf War. In doing so I learned that BDA rests on three considerations: the munition used, including its accuracy; the aircraft delivering it; and the type of damage or effect created.
在这里有一些历史记录，并有一些个人经验。从1991年到1993年，我进行了美国空军对第一场海湾战争的研究。通过这样做，我了解到BDA取决于三个考虑因素：使用的弹药，包括其准确性；飞机运送它；以及造成的损害或效果的类型。
Of these, precision is the most important. World War II saw the first use of guided bombs in combat. In September 1943, the Germans used radio-controlled glide bombs to sink the Italian battleship Roma as it sailed off to surrender to the Allies. Americans developed similar systems with some successes, though none so dramatic. In the years after the war, precision-guided weapons slowly came to predominate in modern arsenals. The United States used no fewer than 24,000 laser-guided bombs during the Vietnam War, and some 17,000 of them during the 1991 Gulf War. These weapons have improved considerably, and in the 35 years since, “routine precision,” as some have called it, has enormously improved the ability of airplanes to hit hard, buried targets.
其中，精度是最重要的。第二次世界大战是在战斗中首次使用导向炸弹。1943年9月，德国人使用无线电控制的滑行炸弹沉没了意大利战舰罗马（Roma），当时它航行向盟友投降。美国人开发了类似的系统，并取得了一些成功，尽管没有那么戏剧性。在战后的几年中，精确引导的武器在现代武器库中逐渐占主导地位。在越南战争期间，美国使用了不少于24,000枚激光引导的炸弹，其中约有17,000枚在1991年的海湾战争中。这些武器已大大改善，自从某些人所说的“常规精确度”以来的35年中，这些武器已大大提高了飞机击中硬埋入目标的能力。
Specially designed ordnance has also seen tremendous advances. In World War II, the British developed the six-ton Tallboy bomb to use against special targets, including the concrete submarine pens of occupied France in which German U-boats hid. The Tallboys cracked some of the concrete but did not destroy any, in part because these were “dumb bombs” lacking precision guidance, and in part because the art of hardening warheads was in its infancy. In the first Gulf War, the United States hastily developed a deep-penetrating, bunker-busting bomb, the GBU-28, which weighed 5,000 pounds, but only two were used, to uncertain effect. In the years since, however, the U.S. and Israeli air forces, among others, have acquired hardened warheads for 2,000-pound bombs such as the BLU-109 that can hit deeply buried targets—which is why, for example, the Israelis were able to kill a lot of Hezbollah’s leadership in its supposedly secure bunkers.
专门设计的军械也取得了巨大的进步。在第二次世界大战中，英国人开发了六吨塔尔男孩炸弹，用于针对特殊目标，包括德国U型艇躲藏起来的占领法国的混凝土潜艇笔。塔尔男孩破裂了一些混凝土，但没有破坏任何东西，部分原因是这些是“愚蠢的炸弹”缺乏精确的指导，部分原因是硬化弹头的艺术还处于起步阶段。在第一场海湾战争中，美国匆匆开发出了深度渗透，破坏掩体的炸弹，GBU-28，重量为5,000磅，但只使用了两磅，以实现不确定的效果。然而，从那以后的几年中，美国和以色列空军已经购买了2,000磅重的炸弹（例如Blu-109）的硬头，这些弹头可以击中被深深埋葬的目标，例如，为什么以色列人能够杀死许多真主党在其据称安全的双层床上的领导层的原因。
The aircraft that deliver bombs can affect the explosives’ accuracy. Bombs that home in on the reflection of a laser, for example, could become “stupid” if a cloud passes between plane and target, or if the laser otherwise loses its lock on the target. Bombs relying on GPS coordinates can in theory be jammed. Airplanes being shot at are usually less effective bomb droppers than those that are not, because evasive maneuvers can prevent accurate delivery.
提供炸弹的飞机会影响炸药的准确性。例如，如果云在平面和目标之间传递，或者激光否则将其锁定在目标上，则在激光反射中回家的炸弹可能会变得“愚蠢”。从理论上讲，依靠GPS坐标的炸弹可以被困住。被射击的飞机通常比没有射击的飞机效果较低，因为逃避操纵可以防止准确交付。
The really complicated question is that of effects. Vietnam-era guided bombs, for example, could and did drop bridges in North Vietnam. In many cases, however, Vietnamese engineers countered by building “underwater bridges” that allowed trucks to drive across a river while axle-deep in water. The effect was inconvenience, not interdiction.
真正复杂的问题是效果。例如，越南时代的带领炸弹可以而且确实在越南北部扔了桥梁。然而，在许多情况下，越南工程师通过建造“水下桥”来反击，这些桥梁使卡车在水中深处驶入水中时可以越过河流。效果是不便的，而不是妨碍。
Conversely, in the first Gulf War, the U.S. and its allies spent a month pounding Iraqi forces dug in along the Kuwait border, chiefly with dumb bombs delivered by “smart aircraft” such as the F-16. In theory, the accuracy of the bombing computer on the airplane would allow it to deliver unguided ordnance with accuracy comparable to that of a laser-guided bomb. In practice, ground fire and delivery from high altitudes often caused pilots to miss. When teams began looking at Iraqi tanks in the area overrun by U.S. forces, they found that many of the tanks were, in fact, undamaged.
相反，在第一场海湾战争中，美国及其盟国花了一个月的时间，将伊拉克军队沿着科威特边境挖掘，主要是由F-16等“智能飞机”提供的笨拙的炸弹。从理论上讲，飞机上轰炸计算机的准确性将使其能够以与激光引导的炸弹相当的准确性提供非指导的军械。实际上，高海拔高度的地面火和交付通常会导致飞行员错过。当车队开始查看美国部队占领的伊拉克坦克时，他们发现许多坦克实际上是没有损坏的。
But that was only half of the story. Iraqi tank crews were so sufficiently terrified of American air power that they stayed some distance away from their tanks, and tanks immobilized and unmaintained for a month, or bounced around by near misses, do not work terribly well. The functional and indirect effects of the bombing, in other words, were much greater than the disappointing physical effects.
但这只是故事的一半。伊拉克坦克船员对美国的空中力量感到非常恐惧，以至于他们距离坦克有一段距离，而固定和不受欢迎的坦克持续了一个月，或者被附近的失误弹跳，效果不佳。换句话说，轰炸的功能和间接影响比令人失望的身体效应要大得多。
Many of the critiques of bombing neglect the importance of this phenomenon. The pounding of German cities and industry during World War II, for example, did not bring war production to a halt until the last months, but the indirect and functional effects were enormous. The diversion of German resources into air-defense and revenge weapons, and the destruction of the Luftwaffe’s fighter force over the Third Reich, played a very great role in paving the way to Allied victory.
许多轰炸的批评忽略了这种现象的重要性。例如，在第二次世界大战期间，德国城市和工业界的重击才直到最后几个月才停止战争的产量，但间接和功能影响巨大。德国资源转移到防空和复仇武器上，以及毁灭德国空军对第三帝国的战斗部队的破坏，在为盟军胜利的道路铺平道路方面发挥了非常重要的作用。
At a microlevel, BDA can be perplexing. In 1991, for example, a bomb hole in an Iraqi hardened-aircraft shelter told analysts only so much. Did the bomb go through the multiple layers of concrete and rock fill, or did it “J-hook” back upward and possibly fail to explode? Was there something in the shelter when it hit, and what damage did it do? Did the Iraqis perhaps move airplanes into penetrated shelters on the theory that lightning would not strike twice? All hard (though not entirely impossible) to judge without being on the ground.
在mictovel上，BDA可能令人困惑。例如，在1991年，伊拉克硬化的空调庇护所中的炸弹孔仅告诉分析师这么多。炸弹是否穿过混凝土和岩石填充的多层，还是向上“ J-Hook”向上而可能无法爆炸？庇护所撞到时是否有东西，造成了什么损害？伊拉克人是否以闪电两次袭击的理论将飞机转移到了穿透避难所中？如果不在地面上，所有努力（尽管并非完全不可能）判断。
To the present moment: BDA takes a long time, so the leaked DIA memo of June 24 was based on preliminary and incomplete data. The study I headed was still working on BDA a year after the war ended. Results may be quicker now, but all kinds of information need to be integrated—imagery analysis, intercepted communications, measurement and signature intelligence (e.g., subsidence of earth above a collapsed structure), and of course human intelligence, among others. Any expert (and any journalist who bothered to consult one) would know that two days was a radically inadequate time frame in which to form a considered judgment. The DIA report was, from a practical point of view, worthless.
到现在：BDA需要很长时间，因此6月24日泄漏的DIA备忘录基于初步和不完整的数据。战争结束一年后，我领导的研究仍在研究BDA。结果现在可能会更快，但是各种信息需要集成 - 构想分析，截取的通信，测量和签名智能（例如，地球的沉降以上的结构上方的沉降），当然还有人类智能等。任何专家（以及任何不愿咨询一家的记者）都会知道，两天的时间范围是不足以形成经过考虑的判断的时间范围。从实际的角度来看，DIA报告是毫无价值的。
An educated guess, however, would suggest that in fact the U.S. military’s judgment that the Iranian nuclear problem had suffered severe damage was correct. The American bombing was the culmination of a 12-day campaign launched by the Israelis, which hit many nuclear facilities and assassinated at least 14 nuclear scientists. The real issue is not the single American strike so much as the cumulative effect against the entire nuclear ecosystem, including machining, testing, and design facilities.
然而，受过良好教育的猜测表明，实际上，美国军方对伊朗核问题遭受严重损害的判断是正确的。美国轰炸是以色列人发起的为期12天的运动的高潮，该运动袭击了许多核设施，并暗杀了至少14位核科学家。真正的问题不是对整个核生态系统的累积效应，包括加工，测试和设计设施的累积效应。
The platforms delivering the munitions in the American attack had ideal conditions in which to operate—there was no Iranian air force to come up and attack the B-2s that they may not even have detected, nor was there ground fire to speak of. The planes were the most sophisticated platforms of the most sophisticated air force in the world. The bombs themselves, particularly the 14 GBU-57s, were gigantic—at 15 tons, more than double the size of Tallboys—with exquisite guidance and hardened penetrating warheads. The targets were all fully understood from more than a decade of close scrutiny by Israeli and American intelligence, and probably that of other Western countries as well.
在美国袭击中传递弹药的平台具有理想的条件，可以在其中进行操作 - 没有伊朗空军来攻击他们甚至可能没有发现的B-2，也没有地面火。飞机是世界上最复杂的空军中最复杂的平台。炸弹本身，尤其是14个GBU-57的炸弹，在15吨时，是塔尔男孩的两倍以上，并具有精美的指导和坚固的穿透性弹头。从以色列和美国情报局以及其他西方国家的情报中也可能经过十多年的仔细审查，可以完全理解目标。
In the absence of full information, cumulative expert judgment also deserves some consideration—and external experts such as David Albright, the founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, have concluded that the damage was indeed massive and lasting. Israeli analysts, in and out of government, appear to agree. They are more likely to know, and more likely to be cautious in declaring success about what is, after all, an existential threat to their country. For that matter, the Iranian foreign minister concedes that “serious damage” was done.
在没有全部信息的情况下，累积专家判断也值得考虑 - 科学与国际安全研究所的创始人戴维·奥尔布赖特（David Albright）等外部专家得出结论，损害确实是巨大的和持久的。以色列分析师在政府内外似乎同意。他们更有可能知道，并且更有可能在宣布成功的成功时要谨慎，这是对自己的国家的存在威胁。就此而言，伊朗外交大臣承认“严重损害”已造成。
One has to set aside the sycophantic braggadocio of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who seems to believe that one unopposed bombing raid is a military achievement on par with D-Day, or the exuberant use of the word obliteration by the president. A cooler, admittedly provisional judgment is that with all their faults, however, the president and his secretary of defense are likely a lot closer to the mark about what happened when the bombs fell than many of their hasty, and not always well-informed, critics.
必须搁置国防部长皮特·赫格斯（Pete Hegseth）的联合大教堂的braggadocio，他似乎认为一场无情的炸弹袭击是与D日相当的军事成就，或者是总统对拒绝一词的强烈使用。一个冷静的，公认的临时判断是，由于所有的缺点，总统和他的国防部长可能会更接近于炸弹跌落时发生的事情的痕迹，而不是许多匆忙的仓促，而且并不总是有很好的批评者。
