Bomb damage assessment and sortie requirements

Computer programs that simulate warfare generally do not model bomb damage assessment (BDA) in a complex fashion. Most models either assume perfect BDA or no BDA, or allow the user to select between these two options. Assuming perfect BDA will allow a given force to destroy a given target set much more rapidly than will be the case if there is no BDA. It would superficially appear that perfect BDA and no BDA are opposite limiting extremes. This is not the case. The opposite limiting extremes are actually perfect BDA and extremely bad BDA. ‘No BDA’ is an intermediate case. Hence, it is probably more reasonable to assume no BDA than perfect BDA in doing computer modeling. It is easy to simulate perfect BDA or nonexistent BDA, but any method of modeling imperfect BDA will be highly dependent on the scenario assumed. This suggests that ‘no BDA’ may be preferable to ‘flawed BDA’ as an assumption in computer modeling.