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

To: LindyBill who wrote (46725)	9/24/2002 7:15:40 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi LindyBill; Re: "Everything I read, that I trust, says there has been huge jumps in accuracy since '91." The implication of your statement is that the military was lying about accuracy (i.e. "one bomb one kill") during the Gulf War. Do you agree (with the GAO) that they lied? Do you have a rationale for why they lied? Why would you trust them now? Re: "If you read the reports from Afghanistan, it shows it." These same reports came out in 1991. In fact, I'll bet that you believed them then, just like I did. Hell, the military had plenty of gun camera footage showing single bombs destroying targets. In this war, they brought out the same gun camera footage, but until the GAO reports on it in a few years, I'd suggest remaining a bit suspicious. Re: "The Afghans our on side were so awed they were referring to our method of killing the Taliban as a "Death Ray."" The basic problem is not getting a big boom and a cloud of smoke in a particular spot. The big problem is figuring out what happened afterwards, and that is still a problem. By the way, you failed to respond to my comments. I'll repeat them and give you another swing: (a) The coordinates are obtained inaccurately (i.e. with a laser that has the same inaccuracy that the laser guided bombs did. (b) The other side builds very large numbers of spoof targets, just like they did in the last Gulf war, except they've have 12 years to improve on it, and a longer time frame to get ready. (c) Dispersion of forces eliminates any advantage that air dropped munitions give. JDAMs are too expensive to use on snipers. In addition, individual soldiers can see the planes in the air and will be less likely to sit in one place. Humans don't like to be killed. -- Carl P.S. Re: "The biggest one was when one of the controllers gave the plane his own coordinates by mistake." Ouch!