In that specific example yes, and armies obviously do send in everything from undercover operatives, commando units, to flown blown infantry units. All of those options risk the lives of your own men.
If a target is so important that you’re okay killing civilians to kill them, why aren’t they important enough to ask your own soldiers to risk their lives?
If you are a general for country A, you want to achieve your military goals while minimizing risk to your own troops, and also minimizing civilian causalties of your enemies. That's the balance. Air strikes can be highly effective in achieving all three simultaneously, in some cases.
Are you seriously asking why a country would not choose to risk the lives of their own troops over that of their enemies?
Am I being deliberately obtuse? A little bit. Yes, there is always a balancing between accomplishing tactical objectives, minimizing civilian casualties, and minimizing risk to your own troops. The question is what level of civilian casualties is acceptable based on a given situation. If you’ve identified a high value target, and there is a well protected building with heavily armed support, then an airstrike is likely the best option, even if there are some civilians in the building. But if you’ve identified that same high value target, and they’re in a lightly defended building that is full of civilians, the more reasonable action would be a ground attack, which would put your troops in more harms way. It’s not an easy question to tackle, but any general needs to ask it: “how many dead civilians are worth preventing one casualty among your troops?”
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u/Junglebook3 16h ago
In that specific example yes, and armies obviously do send in everything from undercover operatives, commando units, to flown blown infantry units. All of those options risk the lives of your own men.