"The Air War Gets Harder, and Harder" Topic

"I once watched U.S. F-16s in Afghanistan try to kill an SUV scurrying down a dirt road, carrying suspected terrorist leaders. It was the first months of the war and in the U.S. operations center, where I was an embedded journalist, it was believed that one of the eight men in the truck -- a tall guy in white robes and a long beard -- might be Osama bin Laden himself.

It was daylight and there were no Special Forces on the ground to laser-target the truck for the pilots. Just that single white Toyota, and when it stopped in a wadi, the men got out to stretch and smoke. As we watched on a live Predator feed, the F-16s struck.

The first pass was a clean miss; the 500-pound, precision-guided bomb detonated harmlessly some distance away. But it did cause the robed ones to sprint for cover. Minutes later, the second 500-pounder produced another fireball and roiling gray smoke and dust. Then, visible through the murk, dozens of tiny bright flashes -- anti-personnel bomblets detonating in secondary explosions. This time, the strike left a partially wrecked truck and four bodies. A third strike was called, this time a B-1 bomber. In several passes, it fired sixteen 2,000-pound laser-guided bombs, a fury of destruction that significantly rearranged the topography. The wadi and the truck were obliterated. The fate of the others was unknown, but OBL, we know now, surfaced later in Pakistan…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Abandoning tanks sounds like a good thing to me. Yay us. "They adapted" sounds like a retreat from open war to guerilla warfare, which is also a good thing at the moment, because it means they have turned themselves back into "light infantry", and light infantry are not an open military threat to anyone. As long as "we" fly air missions to keep ISIS "honest" then they cannot make open warfare on anyone without getting hit in the open….

s long as "we" fly air missions to keep ISIS "honest" then they cannot make open warfare on anyone without getting hit in the open…[/quote

Perpetual warfare without end and without point…sounds like 1984 or Warhammer 40K!

The point is that air strikes supporting MUSLIM forces on the ground will defeat IS or any other ideology that has turned militant and dangerous to the rest of the world. The USA currently does the air war thing better than anybody else can. Our air power combined with Peshmurga and Iraqi gov't forces will not only curtail but eliminate the IS as an entity. Individuals will always harbor hatreds and imagine world takeover, but without an army they can do little more than suicide and car bomb their neighbors. Until such hatreds die of their own accord, from a lack of adherents, we will have to live and die with that much disturbance. That's what police departments are for. But when the hatred turns into a huge, openly military campaign of conquest, the scenario is different and requires stiff, widespread force to eradicate it. Our air power combined with their ground forces is the key to ending your asserted "perpetual warfare". And that is the point….

@Great War Ace: The problem comes with your line "Until such hatreds die of their own accord, from a lack of adherents, we will have to live and die with that much disturbance."

That part of the world has been in more or less continuous hatred/conflict since back in Biblical times. These people don't let go of feuds or grudges, they hold them until the grudge dies of old age and then have it stuffed and mounted over the fireplace.

Family feuds in Pakistan are full-on company engagements, including crew-served weapons like mortars, MGs, and RPGs.