Attrition warfare is a military strategy consisting of belligerent attempts to win a war by wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel, materiel, and morale. The word attrition comes from the Latin root atterere, meaning "to rub against", similar to the "grinding down" of the opponent's forces in attrition warfare.
Strategic considerations
Attrition
warfare represents an attempt to grind down an opponent's ability to
make war by destroying their military resources by any means including guerrilla warfare, people's war, scorched earth and all kind of battles apart from a decisive battle. Attrition warfare does not include all kinds of Blitzkrieg or using concentration of force and a decisive battle to win. The side that reinforces their army at a higher speed will normally win the war. Clausewitz called it the exhaustion of the adversary. A side that perceives itself to be at a marked disadvantage may
deliberately seek out attrition warfare to neutralize its opponent's
advantages over time. Sun Tzu has stated that there is no country that has benefitted from prolonged warfare, but Russia in 1812 won the war with attrition warfare against Napoleon.
When attritional methods have worn down the enemy sufficiently to make
other methods feasible, attritional methods are often complemented or
even abandoned by other strategies. World War I
military commanders on both sides ineffectively relied on attrition
warfare, which resulted in casualties without a strategic result.
The difference between war of attrition and other forms of war is
somewhat artificial since even a single battle normally contains an
element of attrition. One can be said to pursue a strategy of attrition
if one makes it the main goal to cause gradual attrition to the opponent
eventually amounting to unacceptable or unsustainable levels for the
opponent while limiting one's own gradual losses to acceptable and
sustainable levels. That should be seen as opposed to other main goals
such as the conquest of some resource or territory or an attempt to
cause the enemy great losses in a single stroke (such as by encirclement
and capture). Attrition warfare also tries to increase the friction in a
war for the opponent.
Although attrition warfare may seem like a logical choice for
combatants with more resources or asymmetric advantages than their
opponent, there are also significant disadvantages. Perhaps the most
common reason for failure of attrition warfare is related to the time
required to fulfill one's war goals. The geopolitical and strategic
situation may shift dramatically over long periods of time, potentially
giving the opponent an edge if victory is not achieved soon enough.
Additionally, the attrition strategies gives opponents time to adjust
tactics and strategy.
Although the strategy is typically victorious for the more
well-resourced nation, it may eventually fail due to operational and
geopolitical mishaps, such as Athens during the Peloponnesian War, or due to strategic miscalculations, such as Germany during the Battle of Britain.
Examples in history
Most typical
Animated map of the Russian campaign
The French invasion of Russia is a textbook example how elements of attrition warfare interfered with Napoleon's military logistics and won the war without a decisive battle. One of the best visual representations of the Russian attrition warfare strategies was created by Charles Joseph Minard. It shows the steady decrease of the number of soldiers of the French Grande Armée during the course of the war.
The best-known example of attrition warfare might be on the Western Front during World War I. Both military forces found themselves in static defensive positions in trenches running from Switzerland to the English Channel.
For years, without any opportunity for maneuvers, the only way the
commanders thought that they could defeat the enemy was to repeatedly
attack head on and grind the other down.
One of the most enduring examples of attrition warfare on the Western Front is the Battle of Verdun, which took place throughout most of 1916. Erich von Falkenhayn later claimed that his tactics at Verdun were designed not to take the city but rather to destroy the French Army in its defense. Falkenhayn is described as wanting to "bleed France white" and thus the attrition tactics were employed in the battle.
Soldiers on the Italian Front fought a series of battles of attrition along the Isonzo River between June 1915 and November 1917.
Attritional warfare in World War I has been shown by historians such as Hew Strachan to have been used as a post hoc ergo propter hoc
excuse for failed offensives. Contemporary sources disagree with
Strachan's view on this. While the Christmas Memorandum is a post-war
invention, the strategy of attritional warfare was the original strategy
for the battle.
Most unusual
An example in which attritional warfare was stumbled into without intent occurred during the latter part of the American Civil War, when Union general Ulysses S. Grant continually attempted to force the Army of Northern Virginia into a decisive engagement in the open, but was prevented from doing so by the quick repositioning and refortification by Robert E. Lee. Due to this, the Army of the Potomac was forced to attempt to dislodge its counterpart with direct attacks against entrenched positions on numerous occasions.
While these did not yield the breakthrough that Grant had hoped
for, and the Union suffered high casualties, the Union was able to
replace its losses more readily than the Confederacy. Eventually the
Confederate losses rose to a point where they were suffering a larger
percentage of casualties compared to its size than their opponents were
suffering. By the time Grant finally forced Lee into an open engagement
at the Battle of Appomattox Court House,
the Army of Northern Virginia was unable to mount an effective
counterattack against a fraction of the Union army, and subsequently
surrendered.
List of wars
Approximately 750,000 soldiers were killed over four years during the American Civil War.
Scythian tactics during the European Scythian campaign of Darius I
of 513 BC, which was in deep steppes retreat, avoiding a direct
confrontation with Darius I's army, while spoiling the wells and
pastures.
The Athenians, who were weaker in land warfare during the Peloponnesian War, employed attrition warfare using their navy.
The 1987–1989 Tibetan unrest was a series of protests and demonstrations that called for Tibetan independence. These protests took place between September 1987 and March 1989 in the Tibet Autonomous Region, in the Tibetan regions of Sichuan, and Qinghai, as well as the Tibetan prefectures in Yunnan and Gansu. Protests began shortly after the Dalai Lama, the religious and temporal leader of Tibet exiled in India since the 1959 Tibetan unrest,
proposed a Five Point Peace Plan regarding the “status of Tibet” on
September 21, 1987, which was subsequently rejected by the Chinese
government.
The Plan advocated for greater respect and autonomy of the Tibetan
people, and claimed that “Tibet was a fully independent state when the
People’s Liberation Army invaded the country in 1949-50.”
China rejected the idea of Tibetans as an invaded people, stating that
“Tibet is an inalienable part of Chinese territory” and has been for
hundreds of years. The Tibetan sovereignty debate
is longstanding, and the Tibetan assertion that they are a separate and
unique people invaded by China has become a central argument for their
independence.
On September 27, 1987, the first demonstration began. Twenty-one monks from Lhasa's Drepung Monastery and an undetermined number of laypeople took to the streets to show their support for the Dalai Lama, waving the Tibetan flag and calling for Tibetan independence; the Chinese authorities arrested all twenty-one monks as well as five laypeople. On October 1, China's National Day, monks from Lhasa's Sera Monastery
decided to protest once again, calling for Tibetan independence, but
this protest turned violent. Protesters threw rocks at the police,
overturned motor vehicles and set them on fire, the police station was
set ablaze, and at least six Tibetans died. Chinese media classified those involved as rioters, agitators, and members of a “clique of supporters of the Dalai Lama.”
In the following weeks, the Chinese authorities arrested hundreds of
Tibetans suspected of being at the demonstrations, told foreign
travellers and journalists to leave, and established a curfew. Over the next three years, demonstrations of various sizes continued to occur.
The largest demonstrations took place between March 5–7, 1989 in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. It began as a small protest on March 5, with a handful of nuns, monks, and Tibetan youth in the Barkhor
flying the Tibetan flag and calling for Tibetan independence, but they
were quickly joined by a crowd of several hundred people. As time went
on, tensions escalated between protesters and the police, and violence
eventually erupted. According to Tibet Watch, violence erupted when a
policeman threw a bottle at the crowd, but Chinese media reported that
the violence began with protesters throwing rocks at the police station.
Either way, the violence between Tibetan protesters and Chinese
security forces continued for three days, with PAP soldiers shooting at
unarmed civilian protesters in order to restore order. Protests ended with the declaration of martial law on March 8.
The few Foreign journalists and tourists remaining were expelled from
Tibet on March 10 and an estimated 60,000 Chinese troops and police
arrived in Lhasa to restore order.
Accounts of underreported deaths and excessive military threat against
protesters have surfaced, but verifiable details remain elusive.
The exact number of deaths during this three-day period is unknown,
with Chinese news outlets recording a total of 10 deaths and 60 injured
while other, non-Chinese or pro-Tibet, media estimate between 16 and 50
people died. Another report estimates as many as 450 deaths and hundreds more injured in the first few months of 1989 in Tibet.
Martial law effectively quelled the demonstrations, with Chinese police
arresting thousands of Tibetans suspected of participating in the
demonstrations and reportedly silencing any media trying to report on
the unrest. Lhasa would remain under martial law for thirteen months, but no more large protests would occur.
September 23 – China rejects the Dalai Lama's Five-Point Peace Plan.
September 27 – twenty-one monks from the Drepung Monastery took to the streets of Lhasa to show support for the Dalai Lama, waving the Tibetan flag
and calling for Tibetan Independence. They were gradually joined by a
number of laypeople. The Chinese authorities broke up the demonstration,
arresting all twenty-one monks and five laypeople. Multiple news reports labeled this the “black night.”
October 1 – large demonstrations occurred on China's National Day in Lhasa when monks from the Sera Monastery
decided to fly Tibetan flags and call for Tibetan independence once
more. These demonstrations turned violent, with demonstrators
overturning vehicles, setting vehicles and the police station ablaze,
and throwing stones at the police. At least six Tibetans died.
October 4 – the Chinese authorities impose a 10 pm curfew on Lhasa residents.
October 6 – a group of roughly fifty monks from the
Drepung Monastery began protesting for the release of the monks detained
during the September 27 demonstrations while also calling once more for
Tibetan independence. An overwhelming force of 250 armed police broke
up the peaceful demonstrations, reportedly beating the protesters with a
variety of weapons, and arresting the monks. The monks were released
soon after.
October 8 – Chinese authorities told foreign journalists to leave Tibet within 48 hours or “face the consequences.”
1988
March 5 – a revolt took place at the celebration of the Great Prayer (Monlam Prayer Festival). The riots cost the lives of three persons according to Chinese sources; thirty according to the Tibetan opposition.
June – the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, altered his demands to the Chinese government. In his speech at the European Parliament on June 15, 1988, the Dalai Lama proposed a solution for Tibet "in association with the People's Republic of China."
December 10 – further riots in Lhasa. According to
official sources one person died; unofficial sources spoke of twelve.
Dutch lawyer Christa Meindersma is amongst those shot by Chinese
soldiers.
1989
January 19
– sentences were pronounced in consequence of the arrests made during
the riots of 1988 with deterrent harshness. The sentences ranged from
three years imprisonment to the death penalty (with delay of
March 7 – all foreigners including journalists
were evacuated. This signified an end to the provision of information
to the rest of the world on the riots. Five people died in two days
according to official sources. However, Tang Daxian, a former Chinese
journalist present in Lhasa during that period, claims 387 civilians
plus 82 religious people have been killed, and 721 people have been
injured, according to a report he saw from Public Security Bureau.
Drone strikes are part of a targeted killing
campaign against militants. Determining precise counts of the total
number killed, as well as the number of non-combatant civilians killed,
is impossible; and tracking of strikes and estimates of casualties are
compiled by a number of organizations, such as the Long War Journal (Pakistan and Yemen), the New America Foundation (Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya), and the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan). The "estimates of civilian casualties are hampered methodologically and practically";
civilian casualty estimates "are largely compiled by interpreting news
reports relying on anonymous officials or accounts from local media,
whose credibility may vary."
Sometimes, the U.S. military conducted in-depth investigations in
cases when U.S. forces killed or injured civilians (including drone
strikes in Somalia and Yemen). At times, these investigations have
resulted in the military publicly acknowledging and explaining the
reasons behind the civilian harm; providing condolence payments to
families; and, in some cases where members of the military have violated
the law, they have been held accountable. However, in many cases the
military failed to conduct effective investigations.
Total numbers
Independent estimates
Taken together, independent estimates from the non-governmental organizations New America and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism
suggest that civilians made up between 7.27% to 15.47% of deaths in
U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia from 2009–2016, with a
broadly similar rate from 2017–2019. Civilian casualties as a percentage of overall deaths were highest in Yemen and lowest in Somalia.
The New America figures report that:
The first known U.S. drone strike in Pakistan was June 19, 2004,
and the most recent U.S. drone strike as of the report's publication
was in Pakistan on July 4, 2018. Over those 14 years, there were 413
reported strikes in Pakistan (with the peak being in 2010), which killed
a total of between 2,366 and 3,702 people; of the total deaths, between
245 and 303 were civilians.
The first known U.S. drone strike in Yemen was November 3, 2002 (killing al-Qaeda operative Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi),
and the most recent U.S. drone strike in Yemen as of the report's
publication was May 17, 2020. Over those 18 years, there were 374
reported strikes in Yemen (with the peak being in 2012), which killed a
total of between 1,378 and 1,775 people; of the total deaths, between
115 and 149 were civilians.
In Libya, from the end of the 2011 UN-approved military intervention through March 31, 2020, there were 4,500 air, drone, and artillery strikes in Libya, carried out by many warring Libyan factions
and their foreign supporters including the American, Russian, United
Arab Emirates, Turkish, and Egyptian governments. The U.S. carried out
550 strikes (from all methods, not just drones), almost all of them in Operation Odyssey Lightning
in 2016. The U.S. strikes killed between 238 and 298 people, of whom
between 227 and 277 were combatants, and between 11 and 21 were
civilians.
In Somalia, there were a total of 263 U.S. counter-terrorism
airstrikes, drone strikes, and ground raids from 2003 to 2021. Of the
263, the majority (202) occurred under the Trump administration.
Collectively, between 1,479 and 1,886 people have been killed in the
U.S. strikes in Somalia: between 1,389 and 1,696 militants, between 34
and 121 civilians, and between 56 and 69 unknowns.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
(BIJ) reported the following figures for U.S. strikes from January 2004
through February 2020. For Pakistan, the BIJ figures below cover only
U.S. drone strikes; for Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia, the BIJ figures
include both drone strikes and other actions, including airstrikes,
missile attacks, and ground operations.
Between January 20, 2009, and December 31, 2015: 473 U.S.
strikes "against terrorist targets outside areas of active hostilities"
(i.e., outside Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria) with between 2,372 and
2,581 combatant deaths and between 64 and 116 non-combatant deaths, i.e., a civilian casualty rate of 2.63–4.30%.
For the calendar year 2016: 53 U.S. strikes "against terrorist
targets outside areas of active hostilities" (i.e., outside Afghanistan,
Iraq, and Syria) with 431-441 combatant deaths and 1 non-combatant
death; i.e., a civilian casualty rate of 0.2%.
Both the 2009-2015 and the 2016 DNI reports state: "Non-combatants
are individuals who may not be made the object of attack under
applicable international law. The term 'non-combatant' does not include
an individual who is part of a belligerent party to an armed conflict,
an individual who is taking a direct part in hostilities, or an
individual who is targetable in the exercise of U.S. national
self-defense. Males of military age may be non-combatants; it is not the
case that all military-aged males in the vicinity of a target are
deemed to be combatants."
As the DNI reports acknowledge, the government's reported numbers of civilian casualties are far lower than estimates from non-governmental organizations.
Scholar Nicholas Grossman, who studies drone strikes, wrote that the
official figures "systematically underestimated civilian casualties" and
notes that independent estimates suggest a substantially higher rate of
civilian casualties, which is likely attributable to the government
methodology for classifying an individual as a "combatant."
DNI explains this discrepancy as the result of three causes: (1) the
U.S. government "uses post-strike methodologies that have been refined
and honed over the years and that use information that is generally
unavailable to non-governmental organizations," such as sensitive
intelligence reliably indicating "that certain individuals are
combatants" although but are being counted as non-combatants by
nongovernmental organizations; (2) that the U.S. government uses
"post-strike reviews involve the collection and analysis of multiple
sources of intelligence before, during, and after a strike, including
video observations, human sources and assets, signals intelligence, geospatial intelligence, accounts from local officials on the ground, and open source reporting"
and that this often unique set of information "can provide insights
that are likely unavailable to non-governmental organizations" and
"frequently enables U.S. Government analysts to confirm, among other
things, the number of individuals killed as well as their combatant
status"; and (3) some terrorist groups and other actors deliberately
promote misinformation "in local media reports on which some non-governmental estimates rely."
Sources of evidence
Assessing
civilian versus militant casualties is difficult. The New America count
relies on multiple sources, such as reporting from international and
local journalists, corroborating evidence from social media, reports
from non-governmental organization (NGOs), and official reports from the U.S. military. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism count also draws from a variety of sources.
Some scholars and human rights activists, such as Sarah Knuckey and Radhya Al-Mutawakel,
criticize the U.S. Defense Department failing to "regularly interview"
eyewitnesses as part of investigations into civilian casualties, arguing
that this is "a critical flaw in their investigation methodology" and
that the U.S. military could overcome obstacles such as a "lack of
on-the-ground networks, security concerns and/or issues related to
impartiality."
In response, scholar Charles J. Dunlap argues that the Defense
Department does incorporate witness accounts in its assessments, and
that over-reliance on witness statements can be problematic since eyewitness testimony and memory are often unreliable.
In February 2013, Senator Dianne Feinstein,
the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a hearing, "But
for the past several years, this committee has done significant
oversight of the government's conduct of targeted strikes and the
figures we have obtained from the executive branch, which we have done
our utmost to verify, confirm that the number of civilian casualties
that have resulted from such strikes has typically been in the single
digits."
Leaked CIA documents provided to The Washington Post
in 2013, showed that top Pakistani government officials "have for years
secretly endorsed the [CIA’s drone] program and routinely received
classified briefings on strikes and casualty counts". The documents
indicate that the CIA has "remarkable confidence" in the accuracy of the
drone strikes, with the documents often showing no civilian casualties.
The Washington Post said this was "at odds with research done by human rights organizations, including Amnesty International".
Approvals of drone strikes
During
the Obama administration, proposed U.S. drone strikes in locations
outside active war zones (i.e., in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia) required
high-level approval.
The Obama administration process for approving drone strikes in such
locations featured centralized, high-level oversight, based on
intelligence about individuals suspected of terrorism activity.
Obama's approval was required for every strike in Yemen and Somalia, as
well as "the more complex and risky strikes in Pakistan" (about
one-third of the total as of 2012), and insisted on deciding whether to
approve a strike unless the CIA had a "near certainty" that no civilian
deaths would result. The process, formalized in a 2013 Presidential Policy Guidance document, was intended to reduce civilian casualties and blowback risks by requiring the targeted person to present a "continuing and imminent threat" to Americans. The process often required multiple interagency meetings to decide whether to go forward with a strike. However, some U.S. military and intelligence officials opposed the restrictive nature of the system, and some Republicans criticized it as too cautious.
However, in the pre-strike review, Obama "embraced a disputed method
for counting civilian casualties" that effectively counted "all
military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several
administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence
posthumously proving them innocent."
Counterterrorism officials defended this approach on the idea that
people located in close proximity to known terrorists were likely
combatants; some Obama administration officials were critical of this
approach, who said that it led to implausibly low official counts of
civilian deaths, with one administration official telling the New York Times that it amounted to "guilt by association."
In October 2017, Trump abolished the Obama-era approval system in
favor of a looser, decentralized approach, which gave the military and
CIA officials the discretion to decide to launch drone strikes against
targets without White House approval. This policy reduced accountability for drone strikes. After Joe Biden
took office, he halted counterterrorism drone strikes without White
House approval and initiated a broad review of U.S. policy on drone use.
Disclosure of figures by U.S. government
On July 1, 2016, President Barack Obama signed an executive order
requiring annual accounting of civilian and enemy casualties in U.S.
drone strikes outside war zones ("Areas Outside of Active Hostilities"),
and setting a deadline of May 1 each year for the release of such
report. However, soon after taking office, President Donald Trump designated large areas in Yemen and Somalia to be "areas of active hostilities," thus exempting them from disclosure. The Trump administration also ignored the 2017 and 2018 deadlines for an annual accounting, and on March 6, 2019, Trump issued an order revoking the requirement.
However, since 2016, Congress has enacted legislation separately
requiring the Defense Department to release "annual reports about
bystander deaths from all of its operations" including strikes inside
war zones (such as Afghanistan and Syria). For example, disclosure is required pursuant to Section 1057 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018.
This legislation requiring disclosure of bystander deaths, however,
covers only Defense Department drone strikes and does not extend to
separate CIA drone strikes.
After more than 30 UAV-based strikes hit civilian homes in Afghanistan in 2012, President Hamid Karzai demanded that such attacks end, but the practice continues in areas of Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter
has criticized such use of UAVs: "We don't know how many hundreds of
innocent civilians have been killed in these attacks ... This would have
been unthinkable in previous times."
The U.S. launched an investigation following an August 2021 drone
attack in Kabul that killed 7 children, their father who worked for a
U.S. employer, and other family members. On September 17, the Department of Defense confirmed that the strike was a "tragic mistake" and killed 10 civilians.
In October 2013, the Pakistani government revealed that since 2008,
civilian casualties made up 3 percent of deaths from drone strikes.
Since 2008, it alleges there have been 317 drone strikes that killed
2,160 Islamic militants and 67 civilians. This is less than previous
government and independent organization calculations of collateral
damage from these attacks. S. Azmat Hassan,
a former ambassador of Pakistan, said in July 2009 that American UAV
attacks were turning Pakistani opinion against the United States and
that 35 or 40 such attacks killed 8 or 9 top al-Qaeda operatives.
A 2011 report from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ)
identified at least 385 civilians killed in seven years of CIA drone
strikes in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, including "credible reports" of 168 child deaths.
The BIJ found that the highest number of child deaths in drone strikes
occurred during the presidency of George W. Bush, and that child
fatalities had fallen after August 2010.
Also in 2011, the BIJ found that there were "at least 1,117 people
whose injuries were severe enough to merit a mention in press reports,"
and that these were "a mixture of militants and civilians, adults and
children, though their names are rarely reported." A 2012 analysis of the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan by Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation
found that the "number of militants reported killed by drone strikes is
89% of the fatalities under Obama compared to 67% under Bush."
Bergen wrote, "Since it began in 2004, the drone campaign has killed 49
militant leaders whose deaths have been confirmed by at least two
credible news sources. While this represents a significant blow to the
militant chain of command, these 49 deaths account for only 2% of all
drone-related fatalities."
An attack by the US in December 2013, in a wedding procession in
Yemen, killed 12 men and wounded at least 15 other people, including the
bride. US and Yemeni officials said the dead were members of the armed
group Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), but witnesses and relatives told Human Rights Watch
the casualties were civilians. Witnesses and relatives told Human
Rights Watch that no members of AQAP were in the procession and provided
names and other information about those killed and wounded. They said
the dead included the groom's adult son and the bride received
superficial face wounds. The local governor and military commander
called the casualties a "mistake" and gave money and assault rifles to
the families of those killed and wounded – a traditional gesture of
apology in Yemen. A few days after the incident, Yemeni MPs voted for a
ban against the use of drones in Yemen, though it is unclear what effect
this will have on drone usage.
In January 2021, a group of 34 Yemenis submitted a petition against the United States government to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights with the help of U.K-based human rights group Reprieve. The petition calls out the U.S. Special Operations
raid and six drone strikes that took place in Yemen's Bayda province
from 2013 to 2018 and resulted in civilian casualties for the Ameri
family and the Taisy family. The petition also includes documents
describing rural life and counterterrorism action in Bayda.
Criticism
Minneapolis anti-war protest: 'Stop Killer Drones', 5 May 2013
There are several vocal critics of the use of UAVs to track and kill
terrorists and militants. A major criticism of drone strikes is that
they result in excessive collateral damage. David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum wrote in the New York Times
that drone strikes "have killed about 14 terrorist leaders". It has
also killed an unknown number of militants. But, according to Pakistani
sources, they have also killed some 700 civilians. It is difficult to
reconcile figures of civilian casualties because the drone strikes are
often in areas that are inaccessible to independent observers and the
data includes reports by local officials and local media, neither of
whom are reliable sources.
Grégoire Chamayou's analysis, of one three-hour-long surveillance
and attack operation on a convoy of three SUVs that killed civilians in
Afghanistan in February 2010, shows a typical, if notorious, case.
Throughout the operation, there is a sense of the drone controllers’
desperation to kill the people and destroy the vehicles — whatever the
evidence of their clearly civilian nature. The transcript is full of
statements like "that truck would make a beautiful target"; "Oh, sweet
target!"; "the men appear to be moving tactically"; and "They’re going
to do something nefarious".
Critics also fear that by making killing seem clean and safe,
so-called surgical UAV strikes will allow the United States to remain in
a perpetual state of war. However, others maintain that drones "allow
for a much closer review and much more selective targeting process than
do other instruments of warfare" and are subject to Congressional
oversight. Like any military technology, armed UAVs will kill people, combatants and innocents alike. Noted sociologist Amitai Etzioni, writing in a 2013 Military Review article concluded "the main turning point concerns the question of whether we should go to war at all."
In a 2013 Georgetown University Law Center paper, law professor Rosa Brooks
argued that UAV strikes threaten the international rule of law because
they are difficult to place in legal categories and they change the
meaning of important legal concepts like "self-defense", "combatant",
and "armed conflict", among others.
Brooks asserted that the U.S.' legal justifications for UAV attacks are
confusing because they switch from focusing on self-defense to armed
conflict. The international law concept of imminence is also put into question as a result of U.S. justifications.
Brooks notes the shift from an imminence standard requiring states to
have "concrete knowledge of an actual impending attack" to the U.S.
justifying UAV strikes with a "lack of knowledge of a future attack".
Drawings
from 1870 of a hollow point express rifle bullet before firing (1, 2)
and after recovery from the game animal (3, 4, 5), showing expansion and
fragmentationLeg wound by a dumdum bullet
Expanding bullets, also known colloquially as dumdum bullets, are projectiles designed to expand on impact.
This causes the bullet to increase in diameter, to combat
over-penetration and produce a larger wound, thus dealing more damage to
a living target. For this reason, they are used for hunting and by most
police departments, but are generally prohibited for use in war. Two typical designs are the hollow-point bullet and the soft-point bullet.
Function and use
Expanding bullets are designed to expand on impact, sometimes as much as twice the diameter. This will slow the bullet down and more of its kinetic energy
will be transferred to the target, creating a larger wound channel. For
this reason, expanding bullets are often used in hunting because their stopping power increases the chance of a quick kill. There are a number of designs used for hunting different game and for use in weapons with different muzzle velocities.
Bullets used for medium and large game need better penetration, which
means bullets designed to maintain integrity and for less expansion. The velocities at which the bullets hit affect their expansion and penetration.
Expanding bullets are less likely to pass through the target, and
if they do, they will exit at a lower velocity. This reduces the risk
of accidental injury to bystanders. For this reason, and to maximize the
stopping effect, law enforcement organizations use expanding bullets. Even then, some penetration is needed, e.g., to penetrate a windshield or heavy clothing. Such a bullet would have less possibility of penetrating body armour or heavy equipment worn on the body.
Expanding bullets were given the name Dum-dum, or dumdum, after an early British example produced in the Dum Dum Arsenal, near Calcutta, India by Captain Neville Bertie-Clay. There were several expanding bullets produced by this arsenal for the .303 British
cartridge, including soft-point and hollow-point designs. These were
not the first expanding bullets, however; hollow-point expanding bullets
were commonly used for hunting thin-skinned game in express rifles as early as the mid-1870s. Neither was the .303 the first military round with this trait, the old .577 Snider bullet had a hollow core, leaving wounds known for being particularly nasty.
The use of the term "Dum-dum" applied to expanding bullets other than
the early .303 designs is considered slang by most ammunition and
ballistics sources. Manufacturers have many terms to describe the particular construction
of the various types of expanding bullets, though most fall into the
category of soft-point or hollow-point designs. The expansion itself is
sometimes called mushrooming.
German WWI propaganda: French Dum-Dum bullets (c. 1916)Expanded .458 hunting round (next to a Ugandan 500-shilling coin [23.5 mm diameter] for size reference), after killing an African buffalo
Early bullets were typically made in the form of spheres of nearly pure lead,
which is a very soft metal. These would often flatten upon impact with
the target, causing a wound larger than the original diameter of the
ball. The adoption of rifling
allowed the use of longer, heavier bullets, but these were still
typically constructed of soft lead and would often double in diameter
upon impact. In this case expansion was a side effect of materials, and
there is no evidence that the bullets were designed to expand upon
impact.
The earliest examples of bullets specifically designed to expand on impact were those fired by express rifles,
which were developed in the mid-19th century. Express rifles used
larger powder charges and lighter bullets than typical for the time to
achieve very high velocities for black powder
cartridges. One method of lightening the bullets used was to provide a
deep cavity in the nose of the bullet. These were the first hollow-point
bullets, and in addition to developing higher velocities, they also
expanded significantly upon impact. These hollow-point bullets worked
well on thin-skinned game, but tended to come apart on bigger game,
resulting in insufficient penetration. One solution to this was the
"cruciform expanding bullet", a solid bullet with a cross-shaped
incision in the tip. This split section expanded only to the depth of
the incision, making it an early form of controlled expansion bullet.
In the late 19th century, the invention of cordite and other nitrocellulose-based "smokeless"
propellants permitted higher bullet-velocities than black powder,
resulting in flatter trajectories and correspondingly higher hit
probabilities. Attempts to limit recoil to an acceptable level led to higher-velocity rounds generally being smaller in diameter and lighter. To prevent lead fouling in the bore caused by the higher pressures and velocities, soft lead bullets were replaced by newly introduced full metal jacket bullets.
However, it soon became apparent that such hard, small-caliber
rounds were less effective at wounding or killing an enemy than the
older, large-caliber soft leadbullets. Within the British Indian Army, the Dum Dum Arsenal produced a solution: the jacketing was removed from the nose of the bullet, creating the first soft-point bullets.
Since the Mark II jacket did not cover the base of the round, this
could potentially lead to the jacketing being left in the barrel. This
potential problem resulted in the rejection of the Dum Dum design and
led to independent development of the Mark III, Mark IV (1897) and Mark V
(1899) .303 British
rounds, which were of the hollow-point design, with the jacket covering
the base; while these were made in Britain, not at the Dum Dum Arsenal,
the name "Dum-dum" had already become associated with expanding
bullets, and continued to be used to refer to any expanding bullets. The
expanding bullets expanded upon impact to a diameter significantly
greater than the original .312 inch (7.92 mm) bullet diameter, producing
larger diameter wounds than the full-metal-jacketed versions. The Mark
IV was successful enough in its first use in the Battle of Omdurman
that British soldiers issued with the standard Mark II bullets began to
remove the top of the jacket, converting the Mark II bullets into
improvised Dum-dum types.
In 1898, the German government lodged a protest against the use
of the Mark IV bullet, claiming the wounds produced by the Mark IV were
excessive and inhumane, thus violating the laws of war.
The protest, however, was based on the comparison of the wounds
produced by expanding and non-expanding bullets from high-velocity sporting rifles,
rather than on comparison of the expanding .303 British bullets with
the previous, large-bore service cartridge it replaced, the .577/450 Martini-Henry.
With the energy on impact roughly the same, the wounds caused by the
expanding bullet of the .303 were less severe than those caused by the
larger-caliber, solid lead bullet used by the Martini-Henry.
The German protests were effective, however, resulting in the ban
of the use of expanding bullets in warfare. The British replaced the
hollow-point bullets with new full metal jacket bullets and used the
remaining stocks of expanding bullets for practice.
During the Hague Convention of 1899,
the majority of the delegates moved to prohibit future usage of
expanding bullets, which was opposed by the American and British
delegations. Historian Barbara Tuchman wrote that,
Developed by the British to stop the rush of fanatical tribesmen, the bullets were vigorously defended by Sir John Ardagh
against the heated attack of all except the American military delegate,
Captain Crozier, whose country was about to make use of them in the Philippines.
In warfare against savages, Ardagh explained to an absorbed audience,
"men penetrated through and through several times by our latest pattern
of small calibre projectiles, which make small clean holes", were
nevertheless able to rush on and come to close quarters. Some means had
to be found to stop them. "The civilized soldier when shot recognizes
that he is wounded and knows that the sooner he is attended to the
sooner he will recover. He lies down on his stretcher and is taken off
the field to his ambulance, where he is dressed or bandaged. Your
fanatical barbarian, similarly wounded, continues to rush on, spear or
sword in hand; and before you have the time to represent to him that his
conduct is in flagrant violation of the understanding relative to the
proper course for the wounded man to follow—he may have cut off your
head."
However, the rest of the delegates at the 1899 Hague Convention were
not persuaded by Ardagh's arguments and voted 22–2 to prohibit the
future use of the dumdum bullet.
International law
The Hague Convention of 1899, Declaration III prohibits the use of expanding bullets in international warfare. This is often incorrectly believed to be prohibited by the Geneva Conventions, but it significantly predates those conventions, and is in fact a continuance of the Declaration of St Petersburg in 1868, which had earlier banned exploding projectiles of less than 400 grams (14 ounces).
The text of the declaration states, "The present Declaration is
only binding for the Contracting Powers in the case of a war between two
or more of them".
Until relatively recently, the prohibition on the use of expanding
bullets was applicable only to international armed conflicts between the
countries that have signed it. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross's customary international law study, customary international law now prohibits their use in any armed conflicts. This has been disputed by the United States, which maintains that the use of expanding bullets can be legal when there is a clear military necessity. The adoption of an amendment to Article 8 at the Review Conference of the Rome Statute in Kampala (2010) makes the use of expanding bullets in non-international armed conflict a war crime. One example of a war crime involving expanding ammunition is the August 1941 German killing of Soviet prisoners at Zhitomir, as a human experiment with captured Red Armymateriel.
Because The Hague Convention applies only to the use of expanding
bullets in war, the use of expanding rounds remains legal in other
circumstances unless it is restricted or prohibited by local laws.
Examples are use of expanding bullets in hunting in which it is
desirable to stop the animal quickly, either to prevent loss of a game
animal or to ensure a humane death of the animal, and in law enforcement
or self-defence, if quickly neutralising an aggressor may be needed to
prevent further loss of life or the bullet must remain inside the target
to prevent collateral damage.
Cross-section of a hollow-point bullet; proportions are those of a .22 Long Rifle cartridge.357 Magnum rounds. Left: Jacketed soft-point (JSP) round. Right: Jacketed hollow-point (JHP) round. JSP is a semi-jacketed round as the jacket does not extend to the tipVarious hollow points: .45 Auto, .38 Special, .44 S&W Special, .44 Remington Magnum.45 ACP Federal HST 230gr hollow point cartridge, with two rounds of CCI Standard Velocity .22 LR for comparison purposes.40 S&W round, complete cartridge and expanded bulletA 9mm hollow point cartridge, along with unexpanded and expanded bullets. The expanded lead bullet and copper jacket are separated
A hollow-point bullet is a type of expanding bullet which expands on impact with a soft target, transferring more or all of the projectile's energy into the target over a shorter distance.
Hollow-point bullets are used for controlled penetration, where overpenetration could cause collateral damage (such as aboard an aircraft). In target shooting, they are used for greater accuracy due to the larger meplat. They are more accurate and predictable compared to pointed bullets which, despite having a higher ballistic coefficient (BC), are more sensitive to bullet harmonic characteristics and wind deflection.
Solid
lead bullets, when cast from a soft alloy, will often deform and
provide some expansion if they hit the target at a high velocity. This,
combined with the limited velocity and penetration attainable with
muzzleloading firearms, meant there was little need for extra expansion.
The first hollow-point bullets were marketed in the late 19th century as express bullets
and were hollowed out to reduce the bullet's mass and provide higher
velocities. In addition to providing increased velocities, the hollow
also turned out to provide significant expansion, especially when the
bullets were cast in a soft leadalloy. Originally intended for rifles, the popular .32-20, .38-40, and .44-40 calibers could also be fired in revolvers.
With the advent of smokeless powder,
velocities increased, and bullets got smaller, faster, and lighter.
These new bullets (especially in rifles) needed to be jacketed to handle
the conditions of firing. The new full metal jacket
bullets tended to penetrate straight through a target causing less
internal damage than a bullet that expands and stops in its target. This
led to the development of the soft-point bullet and later jacketed hollow-point bullets at the Britisharsenal in Dum Dum, near Calcutta around 1890. Designs included the .303" Mk III, IV & V and the .455" Mk III "Manstopper" cartridges. Although such bullet designs were quickly outlawed for use in warfare (in 1898, the Germans complained they breached the Laws of War),
they steadily gained ground among hunters due to the ability to control
the expansion of the new high velocity cartridges. In modern
ammunition, the use of hollow points is primarily limited to handgun
ammunition, which tends to operate at much lower velocities than rifle
ammunition (on the order of 1,000 feet per second (300 m/s) versus over
2,000 feet per second). At rifle velocities, a hollow point is not
needed for reliable expansion and most rifle ammunition makes use of
tapered jacket designs to achieve the mushrooming effect. At the lower
handgun velocities, hollow point designs are generally the only design
that will reliably expand.
Modern hollow-point bullet designs use many different methods to provide controlled expansion, including:
Jackets that are thinner near the front than the rear to allow easy expansion at the beginning, then a reduced expansion rate.
Partitions in the middle of the bullet core to stop expansion at a given point.
Bonding the lead core to the copper jacket to prevent separation and fragmentation.
Fluted or otherwise weakened jackets to encourage expansion or fragmentation.
Posts in the hollow cavity to cause hydraulic expansion of the
bullet in tissue. While very effective in lightly clothed targets, these
bullet types tend to plug up with heavy clothing materials that results
in the bullet not expanding.
Solid copper hollow points, which are far stronger than jacketed
lead, and provide controlled, uniform expansion even at high velocities.
Plastic inserts in the hollow, which provide the same profile as a full-metal-jacketed round (such as the Hornady V-Max bullet). The plastic insert initiates the expansion of the bullet by being forced into the hollow cavity upon impact.
Plastic inserts in the hollow to provide the same profile for
feeding in semiautomatic and automatic weapons as a full-metal-jacketed
round but that separate on firing while in flight or in the barrel (such
as the German Geco "Action Safety" 9 mm round)
Mechanism
6.5×55mm Swedish
before and after expanding. The long base and small expanded diameter
show that this is a bullet designed for deep penetration on large game.
The bullet in the photo traveled more than halfway through a moose before coming to rest.
When a hollow-point hunting bullet strikes a soft target, the pressure created in the pit forces the material (usually lead)
around the inside edge to expand outwards, increasing the axial
diameter of the projectile as it passes through. This process is
commonly referred to as mushrooming, because the resulting shape, a widened, rounded nose on top of a cylindrical base, typically resembles a mushroom.
The greater frontal surface area of the expanded bullet limits
its depth of penetration into the target and causes more extensive
tissue damage along the wound path. Many hollow-point bullets,
especially those intended for use at high velocity in centerfire rifles, are jacketed, i.e., a portion of the lead-cored bullet is wrapped in a thin layer of harder metal, such as copper, brass, or mild steel.
This jacket provides additional strength to the bullet, increases
penetration, and can help prevent it from leaving deposits of lead
inside the bore. In controlled expansion
bullets, the jacket and other internal design characteristics help to
prevent the bullet from breaking apart; a fragmented bullet will not
penetrate as far.
Accuracy
An expanded 124-grain 9×19mm Luger jacketed hollow-point
Due to their design, hollow point bullets tend to be more accurate
than other types of ammunition, as they are less affected by wind
resistance and other factors that can affect trajectory."". For bullets designed for target shooting, some such as the Sierra "Matchking" incorporate a cavity in the nose, called the meplat.
This allows the manufacturer to maintain a greater consistency in tip
shape and thus aerodynamic properties among bullets of the same design,
at the expense of a slightly decreased ballistic coefficient
and higher drag. The result is a slightly decreased overall accuracy
between bullet trajectory and barrel direction, as well as an increased
susceptibility to wind drift, but closer grouping of subsequent shots
due to bullet consistency, often increasing the shooter's perceived
accuracy.
The manufacturing process of hollow-point bullets also produces a
flat, uniformly shaped base on the bullet which allegedly increases
accuracy by providing a more consistent piston surface for the expanding
gases of the cartridge.
Testing
Three fired .22 caliber hollow-point bullets, recovered after being fired into water. To the left is a bullet of the same type that has not been fired.
Terminal ballistics testing of hollow point bullets are generally performed in ballistic gelatin,
or some other medium intended to simulate tissue and cause a hollow
point bullet to expand. Test results are generally given in terms of
expanded diameter, penetration depth, and weight retention. Expanded
diameter is an indication of the size of the wound cavity, penetration
depth shows if vital organs could be reached by the bullet, and weight
retention indicates how much of the bullet mass fragmented and separated
from the main body of the bullet. How these factors are interpreted
depends on the intended use of the bullet, and there are no universally
agreed-upon ideal metrics.
Legislation
The Hague Convention of 1899, Declaration III, prohibited the use in international warfare of bullets that easily expand or flatten in the body. It is a common misapprehension that hollow-point ammunition is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions, as the prohibition significantly predates those conventions. The Saint Petersburg Declaration of 1868
banned exploding projectiles of less than 400 grams, along with weapons
designed to aggravate injured soldiers or make their death inevitable.
Despite the widespread ban on military use, hollow-point bullets
are one of the most common types of bullets used by civilians and police, which is due largely to the reduced risk of bystanders being hit by over-penetrating or ricocheted bullets, and the increased speed of incapacitation.
In many jurisdictions, even ones such as the United Kingdom, where expanding and any other kind of ammunition is only allowed to a Firearms certificate holder, it is illegal to hunt certain types of game with ammunition that does not expand.
United Kingdom
Most ammunition types, including hollow-point bullets, are only allowed to a section 1 firearms certificate
(FAC) holder. The FAC holder must have the calibre in question as a
valid allowance on their licence. A valid firearms certificate allows
the holder to use ball, full metal jacket,
hollow point and ballistic-tipped ammunition for range use and vermin
control. A firearms certificate will only be issued to any individual
who can provide good reason to the police for the possession of firearms
and their ammunition. Until recently all expanding ammunition fell under section 5 of the Firearms Act 1968
and was only allowed when conditions were entered onto an FAC by the
police. This condition would allow expanding ammunition to be used for:
The shooting of vermin or, in the case of carrying on activities in connection with the management of any estate, other wildlife
The humane killing of animals
The shooting of animals for the protection of other animals or humans
Some ammunition types are still prohibited under section 5 of the Firearms Act 1968. Ammunition that explodes on impact or any ammunition that is intended for military use are examples of this.
The United States is one of few major powers that did not agree to IV-3 of the Hague Convention of 1899, and thus is able to use this kind of ammunition
in warfare, but the United States ratified the second (1907) Hague
Convention IV-23, which says "To employ arms, projectiles, or material
calculated to cause unnecessary suffering", similar to IV-3 of the first
Convention. For years the United States military respected this
Convention and refrained from the use of expanding ammunition, and even
made special FMJ .22LR ammunition for use in High Standard pistols
that were issued to the OSS agents and the Savage Model 24 .22/.410
combination guns issued in the E series of air crew survival kits. After
announcing consideration of using hollow point ammunition for side arms, with a possible start date of 2018, the United States Army began production of M1153 special purpose ammunition for the 9×19mm Parabellum
with a 147-grain (9.5 g) jacketed hollow point bullet at 962 feet
(293 m) per second for use in situations where limited over-penetration
of targets is necessary to reduce collateral damage.
The state of New Jersey bans possession of hollow point bullets by civilians,
except for ammunition possessed at one's own dwellings, premises, or
other lands owned or possessed, or for, while and traveling to and from
hunting with a hunting license if otherwise legal for the particular
game. The law also requires all hollow point ammunition to be
transported directly from the place of purchase to one's home or
premises, or hunting area, or by members of a rifle or pistol club
directly to a place of target practice, or directly to an authorized
target range from the place of purchase or one's home or premises.
The United States military uses open-tip ammunition in some sniper rifles due to its exceptional accuracy. W. Hays Parks,
Colonel, USMC, Chief of the JAG's International Law Branch, has argued
that this ammunition is not prohibited by military convention in that
the wounds that it produces are similar to full metal jacket ammunition in practice.
In early 1992, Winchester introduced the "Black Talon",
a newly designed hollow-point handgun bullet which used a specially
designed, reverse tapered jacket. The jacket was cut at the hollow to
intentionally weaken it, and these cuts allowed the jacket to open into
six petals upon impact. The thick jacket material kept the tips of the
jacket from bending as easily as a normal thickness jacket. The slits
that weakened the jacket left triangular shapes in the tip of the
jacket, and these triangular sections of jacket would end up pointing
out after expansion, leading to the "Talon" name. The bullets were
coated with a black colored, paint-like lubricant called "Lubalox", and
loaded into nickel-plated brass cases, which made them visually stand
out from other ammunition. While performance of the Black Talon rounds
was not significantly improved over other comparable high-performance
hollow-point ammunition, the reverse taper jacket did provide reliable
expansion under a wide range of conditions, and many police departments
adopted the round.
Winchester's "Black Talon" product name was eventually used against them. After the high-profile 1993 101 California Street shooting in San Francisco,
media response against Winchester was swift. "This bullet kills you
better", says one report; "its six razorlike claws unfold on impact,
expanding to nearly three times the bullet's diameter. A concern was raised by the president of the American College of Emergency Physicians
(ACEP) that the sharp edges of the jacket could cut medical personnel's
skin and risk spread of disease. An ACEP spokesman later said he was
not aware of any evidence to support this claim.
Winchester responded to the media criticism of the Black Talon
line by removing it from the commercial market and only selling it to
law enforcement distributors. Winchester has since discontinued the sale
of the Black Talon entirely, although Winchester does manufacture
nearly identical ammunition under new brand names, the Ranger T-Series
and the Supreme Elite Bonded PDX1.
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