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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (45779)	9/21/2002 3:03:53 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi LindyBill; I doubt that the article was written by someone with a true understanding of air power. Maybe he talked with too many air force fans. The fact is that in the Gulf War, artillery destroyed more of Saddam's armored vehicles in the short ground war than the air force did in all the whole damn thing. Re: "Some bonehead planner could argue that the formula for victory in Iraq is delivering one guided bomb -- JDAM or laser-guided weapon -- onto each individual target vehicle, the traditional, time-consuming strategy of attrition. In this scenario, the JDAMs would pave the way for U.S. ground forces to trundle into the streets of liberated Iraqi villages and cities. Arguably, it would be necessary to stockpile a huge number of JDAMs in order to make this approach work." (1) Iraq has an army with what, 1,000,000 soldiers? With Boeing making 33,600 per year we'll be ready to "atrit" Saddam in early 2031. (2) The concept of one bomb per target is unrealistic. The article admits that laser guided bombs are more accurate (when they're at all close) than JDAMs, but read this: OPERATION DESERT STORM Evaluation of the Air Campaign US General Accounting Office, June 1997 ... (3) the claim by DOD and contractors of a one-target, one-bomb capability for laser-guided munitions was not demonstrated in the air campaign where, on average, 11 tons of guided and 44 tons of unguided munitions were delivered on each successfully destroyed target (with averages ranging from 0.8 to 43.9 tons of guided and 6.7 to 152.6 tons of unguided munitions delivered across the 12 target categories—see p. 117); ... au.af.mil What it all comes down to is this: Even in 2002, you have to send in the ground pounders to capture the ground. And urban warfare will eliminate many of the US advantages we've seen displayed recently. There is no question that we can defeat Iraq, at a fairly low cost in US lives (unless we're extremely unlucky I'd guess on a butcher bill for eliminating Saddam at well under 1000). The problems are these: (a) We also had no trouble occupying South Vietnam (they invited us in); it's the fighting afterwards that fills up the body bags. JDAMs are totally useless against snipers in a city. (b) Do we really have to fight? I still haven't seen any reasons yet. The Bush administration keeps acting like they've got a smoking gun, but then come up with nada. (c) This concept of an unnecessary war is hurting us diplomatically. I know that Mexico, Brazil and Argentina canceling defense pacts with the US and writing pacts among themselves is not that big of a deal, but what about Germany and France pulling out of NATO. The f' would it take to get you worried? A split with the EU could be devastating to our armaments industry. Right now the US arms industry is very efficient partly due to high volume from worldwide sales. Having the US a rogue nation will end those sales and transfer them to the EU. By going against the UN we're basically inviting the rest of the world (which envies us) to gang up on us. Sure we've got an armaments lead on the rest of the world right now, but the rest of the world outnumbers us by a huge margin, and if we act like a rogue nation they will lose their trust in us and that in itself will force them to upgrade their forces. On this planet, it's not possible to obtain peace through permanent military supremacy. This is due to the fact that the planet is too finely divided politically for any one ethnic group to obtain sufficient power. Hitler tried it. His whole plan was to rebuild the Roman empire and obtain 1000 years of "peace through strength" similar to the "pax Romana". Hell, the First Reich was the Holy Roman Empire. The basic problem with "peace through strength" is that the peace obtained is unilateral. The humans excluded eventually unite and destroy it. This takes time, but why go down that eventually very painful path when the US is geographically set up for splendid isolation. -- Carl P.S. Time for me to go back to my cave and, wings folded, hang from the ceiling. See you guys Monday, maybe earlier.