"Need surgical strikes? Try a hospital with good surgeons." I cannot remember when I first heard or read this crack. The term was certainly applied to air attacks on Lebanon in the mid-1970s.
Bombs and missiles are not surgeons' instruments, nor is the environment of their use an operating theatre. The Kabul error may have been human - insertion of wrong co-ordinates in the guidance system.
As far back as the 1950s a measurement called "Central Error Probable" (CEP) was introduced to indicate missile accuracies. The CEP of a missile is the radius of a circle around a target into which 50 per cent of those missiles will fall when aimed at the centre of that target.
A CEP of 20 metres meant that half the missiles aimed at the centre of O'Connell Bridge could be expected to fall on the bridge itself or into the water nearby. The other half? Don't ask.
Cruise missile accuracies have been improved and there is satellite guidance as well as the original terrain guidance. TV cameras in the missile head can pick up and home on targets when missiles get close. But errors can still happen.
For aircraft, bombing fine accuracies cannot be dogmatically stated.
Aircrews of planes attacking a heavily defended target are, or can be, flying into a storm of anti-aircraft missiles, gunfire and fighter defences. The steady flying needed to drop bombs in the old way became suicidal. Losses attacking bridges in Vietnam were heavy and CEPs could be 46 metres.
"Stand-off" bombs that could be launched from a distance, beyond the range of anti-aircraft missiles and guns, were needed. Precision Avionics Vectoring Equipment (PAVE) with laser guidance was developed and generally referred to as PAVEWAY.
The bombs had CEPs of about 3 metres. Subsequent development was rapid. Nevertheless there were errors in Iraq and Kosovo. So "surgical" should remain a hospital term.
The RAF had spent years perfecting low-flying techniques, requiring coolness and courage, to enable direct attacks below defending radar beams. The Iraqis had good anti-aircraft defences. The RAF losses were heavy. Better equipment has since been obtained, although there were problems in Kosovo.
Gen Wesley Clark, the Commander of NATO during the Kosovo campaign is now retired and has written a book. He relates difficulties in getting Apache helicopters for that campaign. These were fairly new at that time.
The F117A Stealth Fighter and the B2-A Stealth bomber have been called "national assets" in the US. They have certainly been expensive aircraft to develop and manufacture.
In the early days of the Kosovo bombing, an F117A was brought down in Belgrade. It must have been a shock to the US Air Force; the Serbs were euphoric.
The young people came out and danced around the plane, the girls looking splendid in summer dresses. They had signs up saying "Sorry! We didn't know it was invisible".
It could only be short-lived euphoria, of course. Reality set in during the following 78 days. It may be that there was a wish to conserve some of the high-performance equipment.
There seems no sign of that now: Stealth aircraft, Apache helicopters, etc, are fully in use.
All this is far away from the Taliban or Northern Alliance soldiers on the ground, by Western standards poorly dressed and equipped for the coming winter.
It seems clear that the Coalition is not going to give the Taliban many opportunities for the kind of warfare used against the Russians.
I gave 300 to 400 metres as a final infantry assault distance on October 1st. It should, of course, have been 50 to 100m.