"Has The U.S. Been Fighting The Islamic State With..." Topic

… The Wrong Bombs And Tactics?

"The service quickly found that what had worked for years in Afghanistan meant failed strikes in Iraq and Syria.

No matter how well prepared a military is, it's never easy to shift direction rapidly to respond to new threats. One U.S. Air Force briefing suggests Pentagon's rush to counter ISIS in Iraq and Syria sent the service scrambling to find the right mix of tactics and weapons, with nearly 20 percent of its bombs failing to achieve the desired effect within the first four months of the bombing campaign and potentially contributing to an ongoing shortfall of certain bombs and missiles…"
Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

I personally doubt the entire notion of "winning" a war of this nature through air power alone. It might be cheap (in terms of OUR military casualties), but I question its effectiveness in achieving the desired result (assuming there's agreement on whatever that is). Without allied ground forces there (the Kurds, e.g.), thee would be little productive to show for all this, I argue.

Yes, we made the Serbs cave back in 1999, but this was a rare display of an enemy throwing his hands in the air without being defeated or even engaged on the ground. And I think it gave the USAF the wrong ideas. Got lucky that time, and the Serb dictator's nerve failed him. But afterward it was discovered how little damage had been done to concealed and protected Serb military forces.

When Trump called the terrorists "losers" I realized that he was on the right idea. Calling them monsters or killers only enhances their reputation. It makes them feel important. I think we should insult and make fun of them. I think we should put our money where our mouth is as well.

Instead of using million dollar bombs and cruise missiles on them I think we should take those huge transport planes, the ones that can airlift big tanks and the like, fly them to Kennedy airport and load them up with garbage dumpsters full of rotting, reeking garbage, untreated human sewage, medical waste and the cockroach infested trash from restaurants that serve pork, fly them over to 30,000 feet above whatever city you want to plaster and just tip the dumpsters out. I guess those dumpsters would have quite a whallop from 30,000 feet. Jeez, even a packet of diarreah dropped at the altitude would hit the ground (and someone) with lethal force. Since hey are so phobic about women and their uncleanness, we could drop bags of menstrual flow and used tampons from diseased crack s. Now all we need is some sort of cheap guidance system to guide the dumpsters onto their mosques, schools, libraries and water supplies and the like It's a great idea, save all that money on advanced weaponry and at the same time empty our overflowing landfills!

Hmmm.

Operatiion DPW?

Operation KEERSPLATTT!!!

Operation Dumpsterdivebombing?

Stop publishing the names and photos of offenders would do a lot and be extremely cheap. Maybe bring back 'Damnitio Memorae', erase the offenders from all public records. You can still pad out your media flow with names and photos of the victims, who really deserve commemoration.

Dropping pork would cause a lot of damage too, from what I've read.

When Trump called the terrorists "losers" I realized that he was on the right idea. Calling them monsters or killers only enhances their reputation. It makes them feel important. I think we should insult and make fun of them. I think we should put our money where our mouth is as well.

It's why I always use DAESH (their Arabic acronym, which apparently translates to "cheap thug"), though sadly The Editor objected to my appending "-bag" to the end of DAESH (to sound like douche bag).

Technical discussions about different types of munitions are useful at the "tactical" level of warfare; and those problems will get resolved. But this is not a "strategic" level issue. General Patton said it best: "Weapons change, but man, who uses them, changes not at all. To win battles you do not beat weapons – you beat the soul of enemy man…"

One of the reasons why we lost the Vietnam war (even though we won ever battle) is we had too many technocrats trying to run it from Washington. Political/strategic level guidance should have nothing to do with which weapon systems to use, or which targets to strike. Guidance should be broad with clearly stated end goals. Munition decisions should be made at the lowest level.

ps any good Air Force officer knows you can't win a war with air power alone.