French airstrike on ISIS. Photo of pre and post strike

[dragon]

pic from
here

[Mr. Coffee]

I blove th fact that the French are the only nes getting off their asses and helping. Maybe it's make Merkel pull her head from her ass and make her remember NATO.

[Flagg]

I blove th fact that the French are the only nes getting off their asses and helping. Maybe it's make Merkel pull her head from her ass and make her remember NATO.

Yes, damn them for not putting their soldiers and equipment on the line because the cowardly Americans shit themselves over 2 journalists who knew the risks got their heads cut off.

[Sea Skimmer]

The British are somewhat active too, and Canada has taken steps towards being able to do something and several of the Arab states have offered jets, but so far been turned down. I'd assume because as was the case in Libya, most of the pilots are just not trained well enough for air to ground missions to be allowed to try.

Pretty clear this strike aimed at the FOBs ammunition storage area, that's one down and oh, a hundred others to go that should have been bombed a month and a half ago to go. The fire damage indicates this one at least still had ammo to burn in it, but ISIL already cleared most bases out. They have much experience doing so in Syria. Thus the whole ability to attack into Iraq with T-72 tanks and 130mm guns in the first place.

You have to love though that the French are flying ~900nm range missions with jet fighters to do this, and USN carrier strikes even further. World need for bombers is pretty high about now. Like, actual WW2 bombers equipped with JDAM would be more useful in almost all respects, while being comparable sizes to said fighters. The irony.

[Simon_Jester]

I blove th fact that the French are the only nes getting off their asses and helping. Maybe it's make Merkel pull her head from her ass and make her remember NATO.

Yes, damn them for not putting their soldiers and equipment on the line because the cowardly Americans shit themselves over 2 journalists who knew the risks got their heads cut off.

It's not "shitting yourself" when a renegade stateless army conquers a third of Iraq and you decide to start bombing them after the other two thirds of Iraq start squawking for help. I mean, I get the desire to interpret US actions as poorly as possible, but really...

This is not "shitting oneself." This is actually a logical response on behalf of an outside power that doesn't want to see ISIL continue to exist as a 10 or 20 billion dollar a year organization devoted to training armies of Islamic fundies.

You have to love though that the French are flying ~900nm range missions with jet fighters to do this, and USN carrier strikes even further. World need for bombers is pretty high about now. Like, actual WW2 bombers equipped with JDAM would be more useful in almost all respects, while being comparable sizes to said fighters. The irony.

Well, it's not like the US, at least, doesn't still have its B-52s and B-1s. I'm not entirely sure why they aren't on the way already, I'm sure there's a reason.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but the WWII bombers would be useful right up until ISIL managed to smuggle in some actual surface to air missiles, which said bombers would be totally unable to resist or evade. If the Ukrainian rebels could field the things I can't imagine what would stop ISIL from doing the same.

[Thanas]

I blove th fact that the French are the only nes getting off their asses and helping. Maybe it's make Merkel pull her head from her ass and make her remember NATO.

Why? Nato is not engaged there.

[Sea Skimmer]

Well, it's not like the US, at least, doesn't still have its B-52s and B-1s. I'm not entirely sure why they aren't on the way already, I'm sure there's a reason.

They've been used on a very small scale. Since Qatar however is not willing to support war against its own buddies the main US bomber base in the region can't be used.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but the WWII bombers would be useful right up until ISIL managed to smuggle in some actual surface to air missiles, which said bombers would be totally unable to resist or evade. If the Ukrainian rebels could field the things I can't imagine what would stop ISIL from doing the same.

ISIL has nothing like that and has trouble dealing with even very low altitude air attacks, and you have to be really foolish to think Ukranian 'rebels' ever had such a independent capability either. The Russian support is blatant but not at all worth my time to ague about. As it is the Predator drone typically operates at speeds and altitude comparable to those of a ~B-24, and while the Reaper can reach 50,000ft this requires carrying no armament and exceeds the rated flight ceiling of the laser designator. But the aircraft are being used without problems over Iraq anyway, and Syrian helicopter bombers are mostly safe even at 5,000ft which keeps them above the ceiling of most automatic weapons. As it is we've gotten videos recently of the FSA building heavy anti aircraft guns, that appear to be made out of mortar tubes, to combat said helicopters, but no signs of them being effective or for that matter, used at all. This is not a place that has a really significant anti air threat, all the more so not on the Iraqi side of the border where Iraq is freely using Hinds and lighter helicopters with rockets and cannons. They just don't have anything like enough airframes for that to matter. The fact remains that at 30,000ft it takes a really serious SAM systems to fight you, and at that point much bigger problems exist. Exactly as Ukraine found out via being invaded by Russia.

Reaper is kind of like a light bomber as it is, but its never actually been cleared to use its full potential payload and suffers a huge range loss to carry even what it is allowed to carry, typical missions being about 14 hours when it could fly something like 36 hours in a clean configuration. Before ISIL showed up it'd never faced an enemy that offered up enough targets to justify more payload, but the lack of long ranged manned or unmanned strike capability in the west has been a very well known problem for a very long time now. The amount of money involved this level of inflight refueling burns, on top of the heavy attrition of fighter flying hours is very very substantial. However both the US and Europe became focused on highly advanced UCAV designs to meet this need, and none of them are even remotely close to being serviceable.

I'm sure we could have a stock C-130 turned into a precision bomber in oh, a month, not a joke, but it wont happen because it'd require deciding that the latest US war would in fact be considered a war. The Europeans could do the same... but it'd require them having a significant air transport capability, and like everything else they've barely ever had it and are largely letting what they do have atrophy thanks to the ongoing A400M near disaster.

[Thanas]

"near disaster"? The plane is still not yet cleared to be operated. It is a full on joke.

[Sea Skimmer]

I call it a near disaster on the basis of it costing 75% as much as a C-17; it'd be a full disaster if it got terminated after eating so much money and delaying decisions past the end of C-17 production. That could still happen, easily if Germany goes ahead with the rumored cancellation of half its order which would make an already unprofitable plane unviable, but remains to be seen.

Oh something else to keep in mind, even a large system like SA-11 has relatively limited range compared to modern stand off weapons, and even an obsolete bomber dropping a weapon like JSOW can far outrange it. This is why most countries since the gulf war that bothered to buy SAMs at all have ended up basically only buying MANPADS, or MANPADS and a long range system like Patriot or S-300xxx. The intermediate systems have niches, but ones which can only be justified as part of a much larger air defense system and high levels of spending that cover all the bases. Alone they aren't really effective because they are outranged by far too many air weapons, and often several times over. This was why Russian developed the improved Panstir system, a way to try to negate this problem, but Panstir itself is rather expensive and considered to have serious ECCM problems because of its dependence on a narrow bandwidth uplink for missile control. So its good against weapons, but not good against planes with jammers.

In the end it wouldn't make a terrible amount of sense to buy a WW2 style turboprop bomber right now, but if counties are just going to keep doing these kind of operations over and over again (such as all the fighter sorties from the UAE to Afghanistan for over 10 years), were already into territory where you could project actual cost savings, and said planes would not be completely useless in a full scale air war either. A plane like the French Vautour bomber is really looking good to me about now, actually for several years, if we don't want to invent something from scratch. Certainly better then the Scorpion does. Strip out the cannons for a modern avonics package, and let have it. If China can keep building H-6s in the 2010s fuck if we can't produce a light bomber from the 1950s too, or replicate that B-17 with a turboprop in the nose. You could probably build these planes in a modern car plant to higher quality then the originals.

[Sea Skimmer]

Oh and on this subject, the BBC headline says the US announced air strikes in Syria using cruise missiles, bombers and fighters. What a wonderfully logical US foreign policy we have now, in which we are now bombing the opposition in Syria, after letting the present government get away with nerve gassing its own capital, because oh all of two Americans got murdered, alongside as many as 230,000 Syrians killed in the war to date (UN says 190,000), and after we did nothing when ISIL invaded Iraq with T-72 tanks we knew they had, and which they proclaimed, and showed driving east towards Iraq in popraganda videos..... Awesome, really just awesome. Go Obama forever.

[Flagg]

I blove th fact that the French are the only nes getting off their asses and helping. Maybe it's make Merkel pull her head from her ass and make her remember NATO.

Yes, damn them for not putting their soldiers and equipment on the line because the cowardly Americans shit themselves over 2 journalists who knew the risks got their heads cut off.

It's not "shitting yourself" when a renegade stateless army conquers a third of Iraq and you decide to start bombing them after the other two thirds of Iraq start squawking for help. I mean, I get the desire to interpret US actions as poorly as possible, but really...

This is not "shitting oneself." This is actually a logical response on behalf of an outside power that doesn't want to see ISIL continue to exist as a 10 or 20 billion dollar a year organization devoted to training armies of Islamic fundies.

You have to love though that the French are flying ~900nm range missions with jet fighters to do this, and USN carrier strikes even further. World need for bombers is pretty high about now. Like, actual WW2 bombers equipped with JDAM would be more useful in almost all respects, while being comparable sizes to said fighters. The irony.

Well, it's not like the US, at least, doesn't still have its B-52s and B-1s. I'm not entirely sure why they aren't on the way already, I'm sure there's a reason.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but the WWII bombers would be useful right up until ISIL managed to smuggle in some actual surface to air missiles, which said bombers would be totally unable to resist or evade. If the Ukrainian rebels could field the things I can't imagine what would stop ISIL from doing the same.

Iraq kicked us out and Syria doesn't want our help. So far all ISIL has done to the U.S. is sever some heads and say scary things. If that's all it takes to make Americans poop their pants and demand another ten year quagmire then they are dumber than I remember.

[Sea Skimmer]

Iraq was begging for support before ISIL even reached Mosul, they just don't want large ground units. Naturally the US took a different opion and simply did nothing until it was too late for maximum fail, like all other US policies linked to the Syrian civil war. Actually this is a bit flawed, because the US both doing nothing and saying nothing would have been better overall then a policy of late and delayed and limited actions with no endgame plan in even in the most vague concepts.

The best part is how so many ISIL volunteers have said the nerve gas attacks on Damascus, about which Obama went back on his word (aka better to say nothing) on to the point of stopping the French from launching a strike, were the very reason they joined up. Now for no good reason the air campaign is extend to Syria, where it will create little but rubble given the ample vocal warning given to ISIL to abandon its fixed infastructure. They've been putting videos up for weeks about how they were moving stuff to prepare for this.

Latest newswire is the Gulf States and Jordan joined the US for the attacks, god knows what they all hit but it is hard to screwup a JDAM drop.

Oh and the Obama plan for arming and training moderate Syrians, is to cover 5,000 troops. Some months in this war the FSA alone has had 2,000 men killed outright in action, and you can roughly assume in a modern war about 4 wounded for every person killed in the absence of advanced medical care. So in other words this force will mean nothing. The British didn't propose arming and equipping 80,000 rebels in early 2012 for no reason.

[The Romulan Republic]

Oh and on this subject, the BBC headline says the US announced air strikes in Syria using cruise missiles, bombers and fighters. What a wonderfully logical US foreign policy we have now, in which we are now bombing the opposition in Syria, after letting the present government get away with nerve gassing its own capital, because oh all of two Americans got murdered, alongside as many as 230,000 Syrians killed in the war to date (UN says 190,000), and after we did nothing when ISIL invaded Iraq with T-72 tanks we knew they had, and which they proclaimed, and showed driving east towards Iraq in popraganda videos..... Awesome, really just awesome. Go Obama forever.

Didn't the US start fighting IS before those journalists were killed? It might have something to do with them being expansionist and genocidal.

And are you suggesting we should be helping IS against Assad?

[Broomstick]

The best part is how so many ISIL volunteers have said the nerve gas attacks on Damascus, about which Obama went back on his word (aka better to say nothing) on to the point of stopping the French from launching a strike, were the very reason they joined up.

So how did they go from opposing nerve gas attacks (something I think we all agree are Very Bad Indeed) to butchering non-Muslims and enslaving women for sex and household chores?

You see, that's where this went off the rails. I don't think anyone would have given a fuck if all IS did was oppose Syria's Assad and participate in a Syrian civil war. It's the other shit, where they act like genocidal slavers and medieval assholes that has the rest of the world pissed off.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, if an army of medieval assholes are the only people effectually fighting the people who launch nerve gas attacks... they get volunteers. Some of them because, well, people who don't like nerve gas may be ble to tolerate medievalism. Others because, well... medieval assholes probably don't much care for Assad nerve gassing their grandmas either.

Well, it's not like the US, at least, doesn't still have its B-52s and B-1s. I'm not entirely sure why they aren't on the way already, I'm sure there's a reason.

They've been used on a very small scale. Since Qatar however is not willing to support war against its own buddies the main US bomber base in the region can't be used.

True, they'd have to fly in from a long way off.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but the WWII bombers would be useful right up until ISIL managed to smuggle in some actual surface to air missiles, which said bombers would be totally unable to resist or evade. If the Ukrainian rebels could field the things I can't imagine what would stop ISIL from doing the same.

ISIL has nothing like that and has trouble dealing with even very low altitude air attacks, and you have to be really foolish to think Ukranian 'rebels' ever had such a independent capability either. The Russian support is blatant but not at all worth my time to ague about.

Well, my thought was more that if the Ukrainian rebels (they were in fact rebelling so that really doesn't belong in quotes) were able to get ahold of the missiles, even knowing perfectly well that the Russians were helping them left and right and supplied the missiles in the first place. ISIL has suppliers too, if not ones as willing to nakedly support them as the Russians were in the Ukraine.

So ISIL being able to get their hands on surface to air missiles didn't seem out of the question to me.

[snip justification] This is not a place that has a really significant anti air threat, all the more so not on the Iraqi side of the border where Iraq is freely using Hinds and lighter helicopters with rockets and cannons. They just don't have anything like enough airframes for that to matter.

Okay, that's a point. I think I had overestimated the amount of air defense hardware that existed in the region in the first place.

Oh and on this subject, the BBC headline says the US announced air strikes in Syria using cruise missiles, bombers and fighters. What a wonderfully logical US foreign policy we have now, in which we are now bombing the opposition in Syria, after letting the present government get away with nerve gassing its own capital, because oh all of two Americans got murdered, alongside as many as 230,000 Syrians killed in the war to date (UN says 190,000), and after we did nothing when ISIL invaded Iraq with T-72 tanks we knew they had, and which they proclaimed, and showed driving east towards Iraq in popraganda videos..... Awesome, really just awesome. Go Obama forever.

Meanwhile we are simultaneously arming the parts of the opposition we aren't bombing.

This is like... the opposite of a foreign policy. This is what having no plan looks like.

[Broomstick]

Well, if an army of medieval assholes are the only people effectually fighting the people who launch nerve gas attacks... they get volunteers. Some of them because, well, people who don't like nerve gas may be ble to tolerate medievalism. Others because, well... medieval assholes probably don't much care for Assad nerve gassing their grandmas either.

Here's the brutal truth of the world:

Most of the rest of the world doesn't really give a rat's ass about Assad nerve-gassing his own uppity subjects because Assad is only nerve-gassing Syrians. It's like when Saddam Hussein nerve-gassed Iraqi Kurds. Sure, there were verbal objections but, basically, as long as it stayed within the borders of one country no one wanted to go to war over it.

Nobody gave a fuck when ISIL was chopping off heads and enslaving women in Syria because that was just in Syria. When they moved into Iraq, though - holy shit, they're spreading! And that's why suddenly you have so many countries getting involved to one degree or another, because ISIL isn't staying confined to one country, it's spreading.

[Channel72]

I blove th fact that the French are the only nes getting off their asses and helping. Maybe it's make Merkel pull her head from her ass and make her remember NATO.

Yes, damn them for not putting their soldiers and equipment on the line because the cowardly Americans shit themselves over 2 journalists who knew the risks got their heads cut off.

I guess you missed the other stuff ISIL is doing when they're not logging into their Youtube accounts to upload their latest hits or Tweeting about how Islam is awesome.

You know that other stuff... like um... taking over Northern Iraq. Oh... and um... mass executions and genocide. I can't imagine why the US is "shitting" themselves over that.

[Thunderfire]

Well, if an army of medieval assholes are the only people effectually fighting the people who launch nerve gas attacks... they get volunteers. Some of them because, well, people who don't like nerve gas may be ble to tolerate medievalism. Others because, well... medieval assholes probably don't much care for Assad nerve gassing their grandmas either.

Evil guys killing each other was a "win" for the west in the past. But ISIS moved into iraq and they are close to the turkish border(NATO member) too. Several other countries in the region had a revolution in the past too. ISIS getting a foothold in even more countries would be pretty bad for us.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, if an army of medieval assholes are the only people effectually fighting the people who launch nerve gas attacks... they get volunteers. Some of them because, well, people who don't like nerve gas may be ble to tolerate medievalism. Others because, well... medieval assholes probably don't much care for Assad nerve gassing their grandmas either.

Here's the brutal truth of the world:

Most of the rest of the world doesn't really give a rat's ass about Assad nerve-gassing his own uppity subjects because Assad is only nerve-gassing Syrians. It's like when Saddam Hussein nerve-gassed Iraqi Kurds. Sure, there were verbal objections but, basically, as long as it stayed within the borders of one country no one wanted to go to war over it.

Um, I think you're being a bit condescending to me with that first sentence.

My observations are threefold.
1) There are no doubt people in the Middle East who really do feel direct anger at Assad for nerve gassing his own people, even if no one they know was directly affected. Like, y'know, random Syrians.
2) Plus, of course, the people for whom it is specifically personal, because they or someone they know was affected by the nerve gas attacks.
3) And either of these groups will, given what the Middle East is like, contain religious fanatics who see nothing fundamentally wrong with ISIL's type of medievalism. Jihadists love their families too and will seek to avenge their deaths; people who think it is wrong for Assad to get away with shelling and gassing his own cities may nevertheless believe that it's okay to sell people into slavery as long as the slavery in question is 'Quranical'*

So please don't speak to me like I'm a delusional sixteen year old going "Assad used nerve gas, OF COURSE every man's hand is turned against him!" It's not that simple, but there are still people who have reason to oppose him over that, if only out of revenge or fear they're next.

Maybe you assumed I was talking only about foreign fighters and imagining an idealistic stream of anti-nerve gas fighters...

*Quranical is here being used to parallel the role of 'Biblical' in Christianity.

[Broomstick]

I don't think genuine medievalists living a fundy Koranic lifestyle (or in favor of it) are the one ISIL is currently recruiting. I also think that doesn't hold water given how ISIL so eagerly slaughters their fellow Muslims for the least deviance from the ISIL line.

[Gandalf]

Why is that so hard to believe? It's not an idea without precedent.

[Frank the Tank]

You guys collectively sound a bit like all of the Republicans bitching and moaning about Obama.

If he doesn't start their war of the week, you/they bitch that he's not doing anything
If he does start their war of the week, you/they bitch about him doing something.

It's both entertaining and frightening to watch Republicans collectively losing their shit over Obama's foreign policy, supporting ISIS before they were against it and all, but for a group of people who claim to be smarter than your average Republican, you don't sound a whole lot different... you're just bitching from a different political viewpoint.

[Thanas]

So what? Obama's foreign policy has never been his strong suit and that is putting it lightly. Other people might say it has been one blunder after the next when it comes to conflicts and human rights issues. He is good on giving aid to the third world but what real, lasting success does his foreign policy have so far? Withdrawal from Iraq (if you can call outsourcing it to PMCs that)? Withdrawal from Afghanistan when that state is on the verge of collapse? The drone war and rendition programs that keep on increasing? The destabilization of several countries? The empty threats to Syria? The puppet war with Russia?

[Guardsman Bass]

He's done pretty well with regards to China and East Asian policy issues. His performance in the Middle East isn't good, but it's not like there are any recent US presidents who handled Middle East issues well.