I think the GP assumption is that there is a bad actor intent on serious harm.

I'm not really sure where I side on this.

Ideally Defense would be able to conduct exercises without worrying about harming civilians. But that seems impossible to drive to 0.

I think the top level commenter comes across as a bit one sided. How often is due-diligence done by the pilots? Could the guidance provided be more well defined and reduce these incidences to several orders of magnitude less? Hopefully the military is not purposefully inflating incidences for nefarious purposes or instigating specific instances.