However, knowing that you killed 'X' AND got his weapon AND will or even may be able to exploit that is not pointless.

The key is to know your enemy and really understand who you're fighting. Bill Moore makes the valid point that our overly competitive system encourages misuse of such data (and I repeat that public release exacerbates that factor) but that same system with it's forced short rotations (and repetitive deployments deliberately tasked to different AOs) does not allow Commanders or units to get to know their enemy. A body count is then sort of pointless.

However, as Wilf said when he started this thread:
"Historically best practice body counts were based on recorded kills, verified by physical control and recovery of the body AND Weapons - usually for some form of exploitation."(emphasis added /kw)
However, Wilf cited that usage in some Commonwealth campaigns where a three year tour (or longer, particularly in Rhodesia) was the norm. We don't do that (unfortunately) so many do not see the value for us. It was not and is not pointless.

If you know your AO and your enemy. If you do not, then it probably is pointless...

As for Bob's World's comment on the Intel community and their shortfalls, I've seen that. He's right. I've also seen commanders that would not tolerate that attitude as they wanted to do what was right as opposed to doing what they thought their Boss might want...

He also says:
I would discount the intel community's perspective on this by the "factor of 2 described by Fuchs," I would proably do the same for commanders at any level higher than that which the casualites were actually produced at, say company level.
Hmm. That sounds like an indictment of a lot of Field Grade and Flag Officers...