The hope behind the Hague Conventions was to limit unnecessary suffering during war. The issue with bombs, as with poison gas, was that they were indiscriminate and hard to control. They were likely to lead to a great deal of collateral damage. There was a similar ban on the bombardment of undefended places from the sea.

The interesting thing is that whereas the use of poison gas remained unambiguously a war crime, aerial bombardment became a standard military technique.