https://archive.defense.gov/pubs/Law-of-War-Manual-June-2015.pdf
There are pages and pages of sub paragraphs, but these is the top level heading
2015 version pdf
5.5 RULES ON CONDUCTING ASSAULTS, BOMBARDMENTS, AND OTHER ATTACKS
Combatants may conduct assaults, bombardments, and other attacks, but a number of rules apply to these operations.
5.5.1 Notes on Terminology – Protection From “Attack As Such,” “Being Made the Object of Attack,” “Direct Attack,” and “Intentional Attack” Versus Protection From “Incidental” or “Collateral” Harm. A variety of formulations have been commonly used to distinguish between: (1) the protection from being made the object of attack (i.e., the attack is purposefully directed against that person or object) and (2) the protection from the incidental effects of an attack (i.e., the object or person is not the object of the attack, but is collaterally harmed by the attack).
These situations are treated quite differently under the law of war.57 In the former case, it is often said that protected persons and objects are protected “as such,”58 from “direct attack,”59 from “intentional attack,”60 “from attack directed exclusively against them,”61 or from being made the “object of attack.”62 Sometimes a combination of these formulations has been used.
In some cases, a text may not use any qualification (e.g., “direct attack” or “as such,”), but is understood to refer only to the first category of protection. For example, Article 52 of AP I provides that “[a]ttacks shall be limited strictly to military objectives.”63 However, this article has been understood to comprise only an obligation not to direct attacks against civilian objects and not to address the question of incidental harm resulting from attacks directed against military
57 See, e.g., United States v. Ohlendorf, et al. (The Einsatzgruppen Case), IV TRIALS OF WAR CRIMINALS BEFORE THE NMT 411, 467 (“A city is bombed for tactical purposes; communications are to be destroyed, railroads wrecked, ammunition plants demolished, factories razed, all for the purpose of impeding the military. In these operations it inevitably happens that nonmilitary persons are killed. This is an incident, a grave incident to be sure, but an unavoidable corollary of battle action. The civilians are not individualized. The bomb falls, it is aimed at the railroad yards, houses along the tracks are hit and many of their occupants killed. But that is entirely different, both in fact and in law, from an armed force marching up to these same railroad tracks, entering those houses abutting thereon, dragging out the men, women, and children and shooting them.”).
58 See, e.g., 1956 FM 27-10 (Change No. 1 1976) ¶40a (“Customary international law prohibits the launching of attacks (including bombardment) against either the civilian population as such or individual civilians as such.”) (emphasis added).
59 2004 UK MANUAL ¶5.3.2 (“A civilian is a non-combatant. He is protected from direct attack and is to be protected against dangers arising from military operations.”) (emphasis added).
60 Department of Defense, Report to the Senate and House Appropriations Committees regarding international policies and procedures regarding the protection of natural and cultural resources during times of war, Jan. 19, 1993, reprinted as Appendix VIII in Patrick J. Boylan, Review of the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (The Hague Convention of 1954) 201, 204 (1993) (“Like any civilian object, cultural property is protected from intentional attack so long as it is not used for military purposes, or to shield military objectives from attack.”).
61 See, e.g., 1956 FM 27-10 (Change No. 1 1976) ¶25 (“However, it is a generally recognized rule of international law that civilians must not be made the object of attack directed exclusively against them.”) (emphasis added).
62 AP I art. 51(2) (“The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack.”) (emphasis added).
63 AP I art. 52(2).
IMO due to the advancement of technology and how it is integrated with countries and their citizens everyday lives, we are in a cyberwar. This was one reason President Trump formed a “Space Force”. The Laws of War Manual appears to be worded for a conventional war.
Now cyberwar could be classified as other, or in the alternative the manual at some point needs to be updated because cyberwar has the potential to cause more harm than a conventional war ever dreamed of, i.e. knock out a power grid, override control commands to a water system, disable a country’s satellites et al. Israel, if one is to read between the lines ,has shown the effectiveness of cyberwarfare by what they have done to Iran’s nuclear program.
bttt
LOW
Thank you so very much! gonna re-read and give it some thought.