An ideal counterforce attack would kill no civilians. Military attacks are prone to causing collateral damage, especially when nuclear weapons are employed. In nuclear terms, many military targets are located near civilian centers, and a major counterforce strike that uses even relatively small nuclear warheads against a nation would certainly inflict many civilian casualties. Also, the requirement to use ground burst strikes to destroy hardened targets would produce far more fallout than the air bursts used to strike countervalue targets, which introduces the possibility that a counterforce strike would cause more civilian casualties over the medium term than a countervalue strike.
