January 4, 2025: Attack an opponent's food supplies and weaken your foe substantially. Since the 19th Century, use of chemical fertilizers, and the ability to mass produce ammonia and nitrogen based fertilizers, has more than doubled food production. This has also created a potential vulnerability because there are only about 500 ammonia production facilities worldwide. Sabotage or aerial bombing of ammonia plants would have a direct impact on food supplies.

Some nations may have secret plans to attack ammonia plants in wartime, but most military planners consider such attacks impractical. A similar mistake was made during World War II, when the committee formed to select and prioritize targets for the allies aerial bombing campaign of Germany ignored one key element. After the war the United States conducted an after-action study of the bombing campaign and discovered that an important target system had been ignored. The German electrical power production was very vulnerable, and damage was difficult to repair, because the massive electricity generators took months to build and Germany had few of these in reserve.

For thousands of years, wars have often been decided by contr9l of food supplies. Victory could be won without fighting by rapidly destroying enemy crops and key supporting equipment like flour mills or draft animals to assist with planting and harvesting. If you cripple an opponent's food supply, you deplete the supply of military manpower and food to supply an army on campaign. The most successful armies in history were usually those that paid close attention to food supplies.

Two thousand years ago the Roman army was successful in part because its leaders paid close attention to logistics and sustained supplies of food for their troops. This wasn’t just a matter of keeping track of food sources and what food the army had available. The Romans went further by building a vast network of well-designed roads. Some of these roads survive to the present. The Roman roads made it easier for Roman soldiers, wearing hobnailed sandals, to quickly march into areas not easily accessible to boats or ships. When agriculture developed 10,000 years ago, travel by water became even more useful. Food surpluses could be exported via rivers, lakes, or seas. Trade goods came in the same way. This was the easiest way to move soldiers around. The Roman combination of roads, sea transport and meticulous records keeping turned out to be vital military advantages.

For thousands of years, it was army commanders who developed military strategy. Even nations with large navies let the generals have the final say. There have been a few exceptions, mainly powerful island nations like Great Britain. But for the vast majority of nations, it was generals, not admirals, who had the last say. When air forces appeared a century ago, they were seen as a support service for the army and navy.

But air force commanders soon developed other ideas, especially the one that wars could be won from the air. World War II was supposed to be a test of this theory, but the results were inconclusive. At least that's what the careful examination of the effects of strategic bombing revealed. These studies, especially the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey/USSBS, were embarrassing to the air force generals. But the arrival of the atomic bomb in the last weeks of the war seemed to give the air force a power that could not be denied, especially when the nukes were delivered by ballistic missiles against which there was no defense. Nuclear weapons were so powerful and intimidating that they brought an unprecedented period of peace between the major powers. There were still wars, but not really, really big ones. These little wars were non-nuclear, and the air force was generally not ready for them.

The USSBS found that when many, seemingly from the air bombed out targets, were examined at ground level the targets were still functional

Blame it all on the inability to carry out effective Bomb Damage Assessment, or BDA, from the air. BDA is the business of figuring out what to bomb and what the impact on the enemy is after you bomb. The problem is the ease with which the aerial BDA photos are regularly deceived by the people on the ground. This became an issue during World War II. This was when air forces used large scale aerial bombing for the first time. Right after that conflict, the U.S. did a thorough survey of the impact of strategic bombing on Germany and Japan. It was discovered that the impact was far different from what BDA during the war had indicated.

The air force vowed to do better next time. But as experience in Korea (1950-3), Vietnam (1965-72), Kuwait (1991) and Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001-2021) Iraq (2003-7) and several smaller conflicts demonstrated, the enemy on the ground continued to have an edge when it came to deceiving the most energetic BDA efforts. The only proven technique for beating the BDA problem was to have people on the ground, up close, checking up on targets, while the fighting was going on.

There's another problem. The army and air force have a different outlook on planning and risk. The air force sees warfare as a much tidier, and predictable, affair than does the army. In this respect, the air force and navy are closely aligned. Both are technical services, who are used to exercising more control over their forces than do army generals. The army sees warfare as more unpredictable and has adapted to that unpredictability. Army generals have always been skeptical of the air force claims, and it's usually the army that has proved to be right. But because air force and navy equipment is so much more expensive, those services get most of the defense budget, and the political clout that goes with it.

Strategic bombing is still difficult to carry out effectively, especially due to the lack of accurate BDA. That’s why finding key targets that are few in number and difficult to repair, like power plants and Ammonium production facilities, is so important.