Germany to join French mission against ISIS

[salm]

Oh, my, apparently we have 93 Tornados. Only 66 are in operation and of these 66 only 29 are not broken. So we´re actually launching 20 percent of our planes. ISIS is trembiling with fear.
And most of our Eurofighters are broken as well...

[Broomstick]

Reminds me of a conversation I overhead at the airport one day.

FLIGHT SIM GUY: "Hey, I just got a new copter sim!"
CHOPPER PILOT: "Is it down for maintenance 75% of the time?"
FLIGHT SIM GUY: "Uh... no."
CHOPPER PILOT: "Not a very accurate simulation, then."

Complex flying machines require a lot of maintenance to keep flying, which means down time. In other words, that situation doesn't surprise me. The real question is how long it would take to get the broken ones back in the air.

[salm]

Perhaps. On the other the rest of our military equipment suffers from chronic brokeness as well, so I have a feeling that it is more than just airplanes being complex...

[Thanas]

Oh, my, apparently we have 93 Tornados. Only 66 are in operation and of these 66 only 29 are not broken. So we´re actually launching 20 percent of our planes. ISIS is trembiling with fear.
And most of our Eurofighters are broken as well...

Tornado =/= Recon tornado.

[salm]

Wikipedia states that the Luftwaffe has 68 Panavia Tornado IDS/RECCE (recon Tornados) and 21 Panavia Tornado ECR (electronic recon).
I assume the ECR are better ones. It doesn state how many of these 21 are able to fly, though.

[jwl]

Tomorrow sees the MP's of Westminster voting on weather to join France in bombing the bits Russia and the Yanks have missed. It's highly likely Labour will vote for it en mass. No doubt Devonport and Portsmouth will be busy tonight. There was a small (200+) antiwar protest in Exeter this evening.

The House of Commons voted in favour 397-223. Of that, 66 labour MPs voted in favour and 153 labour MPs voted against, with Corbyn among the against and Hilary Benn (shadow foreign secretary) among the for.

Air strikes have now started.

[salm]

The RAF has bombed ISIS held oil fields.
Why hasn´t this been done before? If you want to keep ISIS from dealing with oil it seems to be more logical to bomb static oil fields than moving and replacable, smaller trucks.

[LaCroix]

The RAF has bombed ISIS held oil fields.
Why hasn´t this been done before? If you want to keep ISIS from dealing with oil it seems to be more logical to bomb static oil fields than moving and replacable, smaller trucks.

Bombing oil fields mean that you might cause a huge ecological disaster with spills and uncontrolled burning. With trucks, you know how much oil can burn or spill, an unlucky hit on a oil field that you can't send teams in to control the damage can make the burning fields of Kuwait or the Gulf Oil spill look like an inconsequential littering.

[Channel72]

The RAF has bombed ISIS held oil fields.
Why hasn´t this been done before? If you want to keep ISIS from dealing with oil it seems to be more logical to bomb static oil fields than moving and replacable, smaller trucks.

Yeah, it seems bizarre that the various nations taking potshots at ISIS have been a bit slow to do obvious things like take out the oil fields. Apparently, part of the motivation is that they don't want to totally devastate the oil infrastructure, the idea being that after ISIS is gone it will be easier to stabilize the surrounding areas in Syria if the oil infrastructure is still somewhat repairable. So the strategy is to simply take out the transport infrastructure instead.

Still, it's like, a lot of the airstrikes happening right now could have easily been started a year ago. The slow, meandering reaction to ISIS on the part of the US and others has really been ridiculous, to say the least.

[salm]

Hmm.... ok.
So is there a reason why taking out everything around the oil fields isn´t possible? Like making the terrain unpassable for trucks?

[Thanas]

How would you do that?

[jwl]

The RAF has bombed ISIS held oil fields.
Why hasn´t this been done before? If you want to keep ISIS from dealing with oil it seems to be more logical to bomb static oil fields than moving and replacable, smaller trucks.

According to all the people in parliament (although this may be spin) the planes they are sending their have accuracy that the others don't have. If this is true, then perhaps they might be better suited at taking out oil field technology without causing an ecological disaster.

[Darth Tanner]

Hmm.... ok.
So is there a reason why taking out everything around the oil fields isn´t possible? Like making the terrain unpassable for trucks?

Using enough guided munitions to make an oil facility unpassable for trucks seems rather crazy expensive considering how cheap it would be for a bulldozer to rebuild a flat surface overnight the day after you stop turning the flat rocky desert into a hilly rocky desert.

You could drop mines I guess... right up till ISIS pick them up and relay them to blow little children up... or force children to clear the minefields for them and tkae video of western mines blowing them up for their media channels.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Reminds me of a conversation I overhead at the airport one day.

FLIGHT SIM GUY: "Hey, I just got a new copter sim!"
CHOPPER PILOT: "Is it down for maintenance 75% of the time?"
FLIGHT SIM GUY: "Uh... no."
CHOPPER PILOT: "Not a very accurate simulation, then."

Complex flying machines require a lot of maintenance to keep flying, which means down time. In other words, that situation doesn't surprise me. The real question is how long it would take to get the broken ones back in the air.

I think more likely not enough is being done to keep them flying.

[salm]

How would you do that?

Keep bombing the roads and surroundings so that there are enough craters to make it unpassable for trucks.
No idea if that is possible.

[salm]

Hmm.... ok.
So is there a reason why taking out everything around the oil fields isn´t possible? Like making the terrain unpassable for trucks?

Using enough guided munitions to make an oil facility unpassable for trucks seems rather crazy expensive considering how cheap it would be for a bulldozer to rebuild a flat surface overnight the day after you stop turning the flat rocky desert into a hilly rocky desert.

You could drop mines I guess... right up till ISIS pick them up and relay them to blow little children up... or force children to clear the minefields for them and tkae video of western mines blowing them up for their media channels.

Does it need to be guided, though? I mean these oil fields are somewhere out in the desert, couldn´t you just drop a munch of cheap dumb bombs?

[Iroscato]

How would you do that?

Keep bombing the roads and surroundings so that there are enough craters to make it unpassable for trucks.
No idea if that is possible.

Wat.

[salm]

So why not? Too much area to cover? Are craters not enough to stop trucks? Something elese?

[Crazedwraith]

And now Cameron's talking what a long hard mission it will be. Yeah, how about you said that before the vote, you pig fucker.

[Elheru Aran]

So why not? Too much area to cover? Are craters not enough to stop trucks? Something elese?

Most trucks big enough to move oil can do some limited off-road work. Threading craters would be difficult, but not impossible. If ISIS has some bulldozers, it wouldn't take much to just fill in a few craters in a straight line. Mining would be a little more effective as area denial, but as I understand it we're not really supposed to use them anymore.

[Dartzap]

And now Cameron's talking what a long hard mission it will be. Yeah, how about you said that before the vote, you pig fucker.

In his defence (do you know how dirty this makes me feel? Bastard) he has been consistent in saying the fight against IS is the biggest challenge of this generation. Make no mistake of it, our MP'S were fully aware this has the potential to last another decade or three when they voted.

Apparently a couple of our Typhoons are headed to Cyprus for support - I thought they were air supremacy types primarily. Is there a ground attack version I've been unaware of?

[jwl]

So is there any news on what those planes actually did at those oilfields, rather than what they could have done?

[SpottedKitty]

Apparently a couple of our Typhoons are headed to Cyprus for support - I thought they were air supremacy types primarily. Is there a ground attack version I've been unaware of?

That's what they're supposed to be best at, with air-to-ground as a secondary requirement. It doesn't make the best use of their capabilites, though.

[Sea Skimmer]

The RAF has bombed ISIS held oil fields.
Why hasn´t this been done before? If you want to keep ISIS from dealing with oil it seems to be more logical to bomb static oil fields than moving and replacable, smaller trucks.

Yeah, it seems bizarre that the various nations taking potshots at ISIS have been a bit slow to do obvious things like take out the oil fields.

No it isn't. Or rather, it is very very well and clearly explained. Obama declared that US air strikes shall not kill civilians, even if it meant they dropped nothing and accomplished nothing on numerous missions. Nobody else has been bombing ISIL on a very relevant scale, and other then a few token Russian attacks all of them were following the Obama lead on this topic. That's only changed in the past two weeks in the face of policy failure , but while the restrictions have been relaxed they have hardly gone away and so oil facilities can still only be attacked on a limited basis. That means sloooow as any sign of workers at the facility means it lives another day, and the mission ranges are high. A few oil targets were actually struck in October, mainly piplines linking wells to storage facilities, because this could be done with assured lack of civilians, but this had little affect on oil production as ISIL simply began loading tankers at the wells.

All those truck drivers and oil field workers are civilians remember. People tend to howl when the US kills civilians even when its blatantly by mistake.

[Channel72]

Well, recently what they've been doing is actually dropping leaflets prior to blowing up oil trucks, which would contain warnings of an impending strike. They would conduct an initial fly by warning civilians to flee from the area and abandon their trucks. Then after one or two more fly-bys, they'd actually destroy the trucks.