Yes it does. The tools for dealing with that kind of conflict are obviously there because they are ideal for the situations they're employed in, no? Unguided munitions can be used to great effect against large formations of units in open ground where accuracy isn't an issue. I already mentioned this. The cost is also a very important factor to consider alongside the actual result, something that you seem to be ignoring.
Cost doesn't seem to be a limiting factor for modern armies. If it was, they wouldn't be firing PGMs to blow up ISIS excavators every 2-3 days.
The modern military can afford to use more guided than unguided munitions today because their enemies are few in number and concentrated in small areas surrounded by people and buildings you don't want to destroy.
Modern militaries
themselves are usually "few in number". An order-of-magnitude larger than what insurgents usually bring, sure, but a modern military losing 10% of its assets could lose most of its fighting capability, if you choose and hit the right targets. That is, they're more vulnerable to being reduced in combat capacity than insurgents, who can just replace their losses cheap and fast.
The simple fact is that spy satellites are too valuable to be diverted for tactical and operational intelligence gathering. They're busy with jobs bigger than locating one storage area. But now it sounds like you're talking about a home front factory rather than a forward supply dump just behind the front lines. Not to mention anti-satellite missiles are a thing. Satellites will be shot down in a war between developed nations.
No one will actually shoot down any satellites, not until the "total war" stage, which will never happen. It's just too risky to do that, too much and you may block the space for everyone due to
Kessler syndrome.
Anti-missile missiles are a thing. As for artillery, there are lasers today that can shoot down mortar shells but nothing that has really been battle tested. But heck maybe ten years down the line you'll need to mass your fire to break through an enemy's point defenses. That's not really relevant though since we're talking facts.
Anti-missile missiles are guided munitions by definition, so you're actually supporting my point of view here. As for "massing your fire", that's not going to become an issue - because unguided munitions are, by definition, moving on ballistic trajectory - and thus are infinitely easier to shoot down than a ground-hugging hyper-sonic cruise missile - which is a guided munition. So again, guided munitions rule, unguided munitions drool.
Missiles can be shot down, the planes that carry laser-guided bombs can be shot down, artillery can be defeated via a strong front line and good maneuvering. This is where infantry come into their own. They can be too numerous and too low-value to be worth shelling with guided munitions, which is where unguided weapons come in.
Missiles are not cost-ineffective to shoot down, because the attacker has an advantage of being able to choose where they strike, and you're not going to be able to protect everything you need to protect if your country is bigger than Estonia. With planes, F-35 are Low Observable, which makes "shoot them down" a very difficult task, especially since they can also choose where they strike and thus go around your defences.
As for infantry, I can say that, if enemy's reduced to low-value infantry, he's effectively already defeated and it doesn't matter what weapon you choose to finish them off. Unguided munitions could be useful in this case, of course, but you could do the same with tank shells and IFV's autocannons, i.e. non-artillery assets, that could, in addition to doing the task of artillery, also able to advance into enemy's territory.
(also, "strong front-line"? WW2 was more than half a century ago, modern warfare doesn't
have "front-lines" in the usual sense of that word)
This field isn't shrouded in mystery. There are anti-missile systems all over the world that have proved effectiveness at shooting down ballistic missiles.
Last time I checked, their maximum "effectiveness" was "intercept of 30% of missiles". Not quite enough.
They're more accurate, but only if you have eyes on the target, but not always more effective if the alternative is firing lots of cheaper ammo with the same payload. Saving money is a big part of a winning a war.
And I say that you'll save much more money if you fire guided munitions than unguided ones, because you will be able to destroy enemy assets faster and as a result, prevent enemy from destroying
your assets. Quality wins over quantity, all modern conflicts have shown that. With quality, you save more people and equipment of your own in every fire exchange, and it all adds up, big time.
Fortified targets exist.
Blowing up the entrance in a right way will make them useless for any logistical purpose. Of course, that would be quite difficult to do with unguided munitions - but with guided ones, it's much easier. And of course, there could be other weak spots, as well.
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you know there's some irony in Russian arguing against an American that guided weapons are better than unguided ones
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Topic: Armchair General General - /AGG (Read 139966 times)