Precision strike has assumed an outsized role in modern warfare. In the First Drone Age, drone-based precision strike promises to deliver accurate,
first-time hits. Some assert that drone-based precision strike and precision strike-based strategies appear to offer a more civilised and antiseptic method of waging war.
Amos C Fox argues that the Precision Paradox is a cautionary heuristic to illustrate the potential shortcomings of precision strategies,
thereby allowing decision-makers to incorporate a modicum of realism into their thinking. The Precision Paradox also helps to illustrate the need to return to military thought rooted in realism and reason,
On 4 April 2003, the US Air Force dropped two Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) satellite-guided bombs on the home of Ali Hassan Al-Majid – better known as ‘Chemical Ali’. Ali,
the cousin of Saddam Hussein and the director of Saddam’s intelligence service, was one of the US coalition’s high-profile targets.
In the strike’s immediate aftermath, US secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, stated that ‘[w]e believe that the reign of terror of Chemical Ali has come to an end’.Footnote1 The strike on Chemical Ali came only a few weeks after the US’s precision strike on Dora Farms,
an area in which intelligence suggested Saddam Hussein might be hiding. In both cases, the strikes were accurate – hitting their intended target precisely – but ineffective. In Saddam’s case,
the strike was ineffective because he was not present at the farm during the time of the strikes; regarding Ali’s, he was present, but the strike did not kill him.
Writing about the impact of those strikes on the war, Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor stated: ‘Chemical Ali was still alive and well.
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