{"id":22122355,"date":"2026-09-13T20:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T18:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/battle-damage-assessment-why-first-number-is-wrong\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T20:28:41","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T18:28:41","slug":"battle-damage-assessment-why-first-number-is-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/battle-damage-assessment-why-first-number-is-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Battle Damage Assessment: Why the First Number Is Always Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\r\n<p>In March 2026, Israel said it had destroyed Iran&rsquo;s F-14 Tomcat fleet at Isfahan. Three months later Iranian state television showed a Tomcat coming home from a mission. Six months later, social media is still confidently announcing that the last Tomcats on earth are gone.<\/p>\r\n<p>This is not unusual. It is close to the normal life cycle of a battle damage claim.<\/p>\r\n<p>Counting what an air strike actually destroyed is one of the hardest problems in warfare, and it has been getting people wrong for eighty-five years. The pattern repeats with striking consistency: a confident number goes out within days, a careful number arrives months later, and the two are rarely close. Here is why.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f5f5f5;padding:20px 22px;margin:24px 0\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;font-size:17px\">Quick Facts<\/p><table style=\"width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;font-size:15px\"><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>The problem<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0\">Battle damage assessment (BDA): working out what a strike actually destroyed, as opposed to what aircrews and sensors believed it destroyed<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Butt Report, 1941<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0\">Of RAF crews claiming to have attacked a target, only one in three got within five miles. Over the Ruhr, one in ten<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Desert Storm, 1991<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0\">Aircrews claimed around 80 mobile Scud launchers destroyed. The Gulf War Air Power Survey could confirm none<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Kosovo, 1999<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0\">Initial claim 120 tanks; revised official figure 93; a leaked internal assessment reported 14<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Isfahan, 2026<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0\">Israel said the F-14 fleet was destroyed. Satellite imagery supported two, more likely three<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Why it is hard<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0\">Decoys, dispersal, wrecks that look intact, intact aircraft that look like wrecks, and imagery taken days apart<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>The reliable rule<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0\">The first number is the least reliable one, and it is the one that travels<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">1941: the report that proved the bombers were missing<\/h2>\r\n<p>The first serious reckoning came from a civil servant, not an airman. In August 1941 David Bensusan-Butt of the War Cabinet Secretariat examined 633 target photographs taken by RAF bombers and compared them with what the crews had claimed.<\/p>\r\n<p>The findings, published on 18 August 1941, were brutal. Of the crews who reported attacking their target, only about one in three had got within five miles of it. Over French ports the figure was two in three. Over Germany as a whole, one in four. Over the Ruhr, where the industrial haze and the flak were thickest, one in ten. On a moonless night, one in fifteen.<\/p>\r\n<p>The crucial point is that the crews were not lying. They had flown into darkness and flak, aimed at what they believed was the target, and come home convinced. The camera disagreed. Bomber Command&rsquo;s leadership disputed the report; the eventual answer was better navigation aids and the Pathfinder Force, plus a shift in doctrine towards area bombing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/soldier-battle-damage-assessment-crater.jpg\" alt=\"Soldier stands in a crater during battle damage assessment\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">A soldier stands in a crater during ground battle damage assessment. Walking the target is the most reliable method and almost never available. US Army photo \/ DVIDS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">1991: the launchers that were never there<\/h2>\r\n<p>Fifty years on, with precision weapons and infrared sensors, the Great Scud Hunt produced the same result in a different form.<\/p>\r\n<p>Iraq&rsquo;s mobile Scud launchers were the political target of the war: every missile that reached Israel risked widening the conflict. The coalition planned roughly 4,750 anti-Scud sorties. Aircrews came home claiming around 80 mobile launchers destroyed, and special forces teams claimed another twenty or so.<\/p>\r\n<p>The Gulf War Air Power Survey, commissioned by the Air Force in 1991 and published in 1993, went looking for the wreckage. It found no evidence that any mobile launcher had been destroyed. Most or all of the kills, it concluded, were high-fidelity decoys or vehicles with a similar signature, fuel tanker trucks prominent among them.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #d32f2f;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7\"><em>&ldquo;There was no evidence the coalition destroyed any mobile launchers, and most, if not all, of the kills were actually against high-fidelity decoys or other vehicles bearing a similar signature.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Gulf War Air Power Survey<\/strong> &mdash; US Air Force, published 1993, on counter-Scud operations<\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>A pre-war trial had already hinted at the difficulty: given precise coordinates, aircraft acquired a launcher less than half the time. At night, from altitude, through a targeting pod, a tanker truck and a transporter-erector-launcher are the same shape and the same heat.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PiLt-9m-CIo\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">1999: 120 tanks, then 93, then 14<\/h2>\r\n<p>Kosovo produced the most public collision between an early number and a late one.<\/p>\r\n<p>On 10 June 1999, Defense Secretary William Cohen and General Henry Shelton announced that NATO air power had destroyed 120 tanks and self-propelled guns, 220 armoured personnel carriers and 450 artillery pieces in Kosovo.<\/p>\r\n<p>Then NATO sent people to look. The Munitions Effectiveness Assessment Team, about 200 personnel drawn from several nations and services, worked through some 2,000 mission reports generated by roughly 3,000 strike sorties. It required two independent sources before validating a kill: the aircrew report plus cockpit video, a forward air controller, imagery or other intelligence. Around half the reports failed that test. Of 1,102 validated strikes, 25 had hit decoys.<\/p>\r\n<p>The revised official figures, issued that September, were 93 tanks and self-propelled guns, 153 APCs and 389 artillery pieces. In May 2000 <em>Newsweek<\/em> published a piece titled &ldquo;The Kosovo Cover-Up&rdquo; reporting an internal assessment of just 14 tanks, a figure that sat suspiciously close to what the Yugoslav army itself had claimed.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #1565c0;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7\"><em>&ldquo;It is no wonder that the Serbs are trying so hard to conceal the damages that NATO did.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>General Wesley Clark<\/strong> &mdash; Supreme Allied Commander Europe, press conference, 16 September 1999<\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Which number is right is still argued about. That is the point. Three separate figures, all produced by serious people looking at the same war, spanning almost an order of magnitude.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vl_DPhmII6U\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">What makes counting so hard<\/h2>\r\n<p>Strip away the eras and the same handful of problems recur.<\/p>\r\n<p><strong>Decoys work, and they are cheap.<\/strong> Iraq fielded high-fidelity Scud replicas. Serbia used inflatable tanks, heated stovepipes and burning tyres to generate convincing infrared signatures. A decoy does not have to fool an analyst studying an image for an hour; it has to fool a pilot at 15,000 feet with eleven seconds to decide.<\/p>\r\n<p><strong>Things move.<\/strong> This is the trap at Isfahan. Commercial imagery showed five F-14s on the base on 22 February. After the 7 March strike, two or three were destroyed, and two more were simply no longer there. Absent from a photograph is not the same as destroyed, but it looks identical in a headline.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/geospatial-analyst-imagery-analysis-screens.jpg\" alt=\"Geospatial analyst points at imagery on screen\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">A geospatial analyst works through overhead imagery. The judgement of destroyed against damaged against relocated is made from pixels, days after the event. US Air Force photo \/ DVIDS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><strong>Wrecked and intact look alike from above.<\/strong> An airframe gutted by fire can retain its planform. A scorch mark can mean a destroyed aircraft, a destroyed fuel bowser or a burnt patch of dispersal. The War Zone&rsquo;s read of the Isfahan imagery hedged exactly here: two Tomcats confirmed, a third indicated by a large scorch mark whose wreckage could not be assessed with confidence.<\/p>\r\n<p><strong>Damaged is not destroyed, and repairable is not written off.<\/strong> Iran has kept Tomcats flying for forty-seven years without a spare-parts pipeline. A fleet that survives sanctions on cannibalisation and improvisation is precisely the fleet most likely to put a damaged aircraft back in the air.<\/p>\r\n<p><strong>Everyone in the chain has an incentive.<\/strong> Not to lie, usually, but to lean. Aircrew want the mission to have worked. Commanders want the campaign to be working. Governments want a result. The defender has the mirror incentive to hide damage. The careful count arrives months later, from people with no stake in the answer, and by then nobody is reading.<\/p>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Reading the next claim<\/h2>\r\n<p>None of this means claims are worthless. NATO really did destroy a great deal of Serbian equipment. Israel really did destroy Tomcats at Isfahan. The problem is precision, not direction.<\/p>\r\n<p>Three questions separate a solid claim from a soft one. <strong>Who counted, and did they have to show two independent sources?<\/strong> The MEAT standard is the gold standard precisely because it threw out half the reports. <strong>What is the imagery baseline?<\/strong> A single post-strike photograph tells you what is there now, not what was there before. <strong>Does the claim distinguish destroyed from damaged from missing?<\/strong> If it does not, it is a headline rather than an assessment.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7\"><em>&ldquo;Battle damage bean counting is not the way to measure the full effects of airpower.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>General Wesley Clark<\/strong> &mdash; Supreme Allied Commander Europe, on the Kosovo campaign assessment<\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Clark had a point, even if he also wanted the numbers. The strategic effect of an air campaign is rarely captured by a tally of burned vehicles. But the tally is what gets published, shared and remembered, which is why it is worth knowing how it is made.<\/p>\r\n<p>When the next post announces that the last of something has been wiped out, the useful reflex is not disbelief. It is to note the date, and wait for the second number.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\r\n\r\n\r\n<section class=\"mfq\"><h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2><div class=\"qa\"><details open><summary>What is battle damage assessment?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Battle damage assessment, usually shortened to BDA, is the process of determining what a strike actually destroyed or disabled, as distinct from what the attacking crews and sensors believed they hit. It draws on aircrew reports, cockpit video, satellite and aerial imagery, signals intelligence and, where possible, physical inspection of the target.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why are initial battle damage claims usually too high?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Several pressures push the first number upward. Decoys and similar-looking vehicles are counted as real targets, damaged equipment is recorded as destroyed, aircraft or vehicles that were moved before the strike appear to be missing because they were hit, and everyone in the reporting chain has an incentive to believe the mission worked. Careful reassessment takes months and almost always revises the figure down.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What did the Butt Report find in 1941?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">David Bensusan-Butt of the War Cabinet Secretariat examined 633 target photographs and found that of RAF Bomber Command crews who claimed to have attacked their target, only about one in three had come within five miles of it. Over Germany it was one in four, over the Ruhr one in ten, and on a moonless night one in fifteen. The report was published on 18 August 1941.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How many Scud launchers did the coalition destroy in the 1991 Gulf War?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The Gulf War Air Power Survey, published in 1993, found no evidence that any Iraqi mobile Scud launcher was destroyed by coalition air power, despite aircrews claiming around 80 kills and special forces roughly 20 more. It concluded that most or all of the claimed kills were against high-fidelity decoys or vehicles with a similar signature, such as fuel tanker trucks.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How many Serbian tanks did NATO destroy in Kosovo in 1999?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The figure is still disputed. On 10 June 1999 the United States announced 120 tanks and self-propelled guns destroyed. A post-war review by the Munitions Effectiveness Assessment Team revised the official total to 93 that September. In May 2000 Newsweek reported an internal assessment of only 14 tanks. The review team required two independent sources per claim and rejected roughly half the mission reports it examined.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How many Iranian F-14 Tomcats were actually destroyed at Isfahan?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Israel stated after the strike on the night of 7 to 8 March 2026 that Iran no longer had an operational Tomcat. Analysis of Vantor commercial satellite imagery from 9 March, compared with a 22 February baseline, supported at least two and more likely three destroyed F-14s out of five visible at the base, with two others apparently relocated. Around ten other aircraft, assessed as F-7s, were destroyed. Iranian state media released footage of an F-14 returning from a mission on 10 June 2026.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Do military decoys really work against modern sensors?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Yes, and they remain cheap relative to the weapons spent on them. Iraq used high-fidelity Scud launcher replicas in 1991 and Serbia used inflatable vehicles and heat sources in 1999. A decoy does not need to survive prolonged analysis; it only needs to satisfy a pilot or a weapons officer making a decision in seconds, or to occupy one expensive munition.<\/div><\/details><\/div><\/section>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"FAQPage\",\"mainEntity\":[{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What is battle damage assessment?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Battle damage assessment, usually shortened to BDA, is the process of determining what a strike actually destroyed or disabled, as distinct from what the attacking crews and sensors believed they hit. It draws on aircrew reports, cockpit video, satellite and aerial imagery, signals intelligence and, where possible, physical inspection of the target.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Why are initial battle damage claims usually too high?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Several pressures push the first number upward. Decoys and similar-looking vehicles are counted as real targets, damaged equipment is recorded as destroyed, aircraft or vehicles that were moved before the strike appear to be missing because they were hit, and everyone in the reporting chain has an incentive to believe the mission worked. Careful reassessment takes months and almost always revises the figure down.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What did the Butt Report find in 1941?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"David Bensusan-Butt of the War Cabinet Secretariat examined 633 target photographs and found that of RAF Bomber Command crews who claimed to have attacked their target, only about one in three had come within five miles of it. Over Germany it was one in four, over the Ruhr one in ten, and on a moonless night one in fifteen. The report was published on 18 August 1941.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"How many Scud launchers did the coalition destroy in the 1991 Gulf War?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The Gulf War Air Power Survey, published in 1993, found no evidence that any Iraqi mobile Scud launcher was destroyed by coalition air power, despite aircrews claiming around 80 kills and special forces roughly 20 more. It concluded that most or all of the claimed kills were against high-fidelity decoys or vehicles with a similar signature, such as fuel tanker trucks.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"How many Serbian tanks did NATO destroy in Kosovo in 1999?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The figure is still disputed. On 10 June 1999 the United States announced 120 tanks and self-propelled guns destroyed. A post-war review by the Munitions Effectiveness Assessment Team revised the official total to 93 that September. In May 2000 Newsweek reported an internal assessment of only 14 tanks. The review team required two independent sources per claim and rejected roughly half the mission reports it examined.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"How many Iranian F-14 Tomcats were actually destroyed at Isfahan?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Israel stated after the strike on the night of 7 to 8 March 2026 that Iran no longer had an operational Tomcat. Analysis of Vantor commercial satellite imagery from 9 March, compared with a 22 February baseline, supported at least two and more likely three destroyed F-14s out of five visible at the base, with two others apparently relocated. Around ten other aircraft, assessed as F-7s, were destroyed. Iranian state media released footage of an F-14 returning from a mission on 10 June 2026.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Do military decoys really work against modern sensors?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Yes, and they remain cheap relative to the weapons spent on them. Iraq used high-fidelity Scud launcher replicas in 1991 and Serbia used inflatable vehicles and heat sources in 1999. A decoy does not need to survive prolonged analysis; it only needs to satisfy a pilot or a weapons officer making a decision in seconds, or to occupy one expensive munition.\"}}]}<\/script><p style=\"font-size:14px;color:#777;font-style:italic;margin-top:28px\">Sources: Gulf War Air Power Survey; US Air Force Crossbow counter-Scud study; Air &amp; Space Forces Magazine; Newsweek; The War Zone; The Aviationist; 19FortyFive; Butt Report (18 August 1941); Afterburner reporting<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/iran-f-14-tomcat-50-years-combat-isfahan-strikes-maverick-act-2026\/\">Iran&rsquo;s F-14 Tomcats Turn 50 &mdash; And They&rsquo;re Flying Combat Again<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/trump-denies-muwaffaq-salti-aircraft-damage-2026\/\">Trump Denies Damage at Muwaffaq Salti<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/muwaffaq-salti-iran-damages-us-a-10-f-15e-2026\/\">Iran Damages US A-10s and an F-15E at Muwaffaq Salti<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/cad-pad-aircraft-explosives-expiry-dates-ejection-seats\/\">CAD\/PADs: Every Fighter Jet&rsquo;s Explosives Have an Expiry Date<\/a><\/p><\/div>\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Israel said Iran\u2019s F-14 fleet was destroyed. Then one flew. From the Butt Report to the Scud hunt to Kosovo\u2019s 120 tanks that became 14, counting what an air strike destroyed has been getting people wrong for eighty-five years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":22121830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22122355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-and-legends","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Battle Damage Assessment: Why the First Number Is Always Wrong | MiGFlug<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From the 1941 Butt Report to the Scud hunt and Kosovo\u2019s 120 tanks that became 14, battle damage assessment keeps proving the first strike claim wrong. 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