Smart weapons don’t last forever. The batteries, hydraulics, etc… all have a shelf life. If you don’t kill somebody with them, you gotta pull ’em out of service, fix ’em up, and put ’em back in stock. That costs money. It’s a lot more fun just to drop them on people.
We can’t go 10 years without shooting off a whole bunch of tomahawks at somebody. I’m guessing that’s getting near the “service time” shelf life. Once they knock out the air defenses (again, using smart weapons) they will need to go drop a bunch of smart bombs.
Afterward they award the replenishment contracts which of course are worth a lot more than if they had just rotated and serviced them.
