I hear it is actually preferential to cripple soldiers rather than outright kill them in attritional warfare. A dead soldier is a martyr. A cripple is a terrifying look at your future + an expense.

[–] Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 3 days ago

This won't be an attritional war in terms of bodies tho. A land invasion of US troops is unlikely. Killing those troops instead instills fear in troops and makes the US public recoil.

[–] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Naw, this is one of those often repeated ideas based on someone's guess being spread as a factual. Wounded troops don't actually cause more problems for a military than dead ones. Wounded can either return to combat after healing or return home to train other troops/work in factories/whatever. Dead troops means all the training that went into a person is now gone.

There's also the logistics of dealing with dead bodies, something much more resource intensive than people who are only wounded. Serious blow to morale if bodies aren't returned for funerals, nor can you leave them piled around because of disease.

[–] tastemyglaive@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I'm learning a lot from this war (including this summer) but I wasn't expecting to have to reconsider stuff like this and my friend going off about how shooting people in the leg is dumb (you have no way of knowing if they are disabled or can still get a sight picture, etc).

[–] bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 3 days ago

I much prefer them dead thank you.