The reaction of Iraqi forces to direct precision air attacks indicated that the traditional powerful psychological impact of air attack had, at last, been matched by the equally powerful impact of actual destruction. What can be identified can be targeted so precisely that unnecessary casualties are not inflicted upon an opponent. In short, war, the great waster of human life, is now significantly more humane. Increasingly, war is more about destroying or incapacitating things as opposed to people. Further, in the precision engagement era, what has changed most dramatically has been the time scale and level of effort required to achieve decisive effects over an opponent. Today, planners are far less concerned about the number of sorties required to destroy a target; rather, they emphasize the number of targets destroyed per sortie as the metric that must be considered.