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The comparison we're making is whether precision attacks, presumably on roughly building-sized targets, would be cheaper to do from long range via ICBMs (with conventional warheads), or via much cheaper but shorter-range missiles. My guess is that neither ICBMs nor shorter-range missiles could have accomplished what the U.S. military accomplished in Iraq. Presumably missiles alone were responsible for a small portion of that $54 billion.


If I can trust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-30_Minuteman a Minuteman III (which is the current ICBM design used by the US) will land within 800ft (240m) of its intended target 50% of the time. And outside that circle the other 50%.

In other words, you can't really target a "building-size" target with these (with maybe exceptions like the Pentagon).

For nuclear payloads, a few hundred meters of error is much less of an issue, of course.


In the first Iraq war, "surgical strike" was euphemism for undiscriminate carpet bombing. Was the second Iraq war any different ?




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