I figured this needed its own thread. I wasn't around for Vietnam, but this feels like the start of another Vietnam war. Russian troops in areas that we strategically bombed seems like the start of something really bad.
Doing the quick math... We launched 59 Tomahawk CM's at an airfield. At $1mil per launch, that's roughly $60mil to bomb an airfield. Hardly sustainable. Especially since we gave Russia prior notification which of course, they passed on to their allies the Syrians. Those missiles probably hit open ground and few empty bldgs. Would have been cheaper to use Reaper Drones with JDam's. What's cheaper??? How long do think its gonna take the Russians and Syrians to repair that air base and fortify it with AA batteries? Cheaper message could have been sent. Nothing really gained by this that couldn't have been accomplished using less grandiose means.
Costly but this was the right move at the right time. A clear message is sent to the entire world. Besides Iran and Russia, everybody clapped USA for this.
Clapping doesn't pay the bills. This is not a sustainable option for war fighting. The entire point of asymetrical warfare is to make the cost of fighting a war not worth it. Its far cheaper for Assad to simply repair that air base than for us to keep bombing it. We cannot keep on launching million dollar missiles at aircraft hangers and runways. Economically it makes no sense especially when there were more cost effective ways of delivering similar ordinance. This was more for the optics than for people he won't even allow into the country.
I worked with the Military for a little while and while the grunts ae nice guys the braintrust are arrogant a holes
Grandpa. Are you saying the message could have been sent in a cheaper way? If so, I understand. No objection there. But if you are thinking the message itself was wrong, I won't agree with you. Clapping won't mean much to you but show me when an entire world backed a US assault like this?
Brook, that's exactly what I'm saying.. We didn't have to use tomahawk cruise missiles when we could have used other unmanned means to deliver similar HE ordinance. I got no problem with the message, just the grandiose means of delivering it. If you're gonna cut "meals on wheels" and other social programs here in the US because they weren't cost effective, how can anyone justify spending $60mil bombing an airfield that we had already given notice we were gonna bomb? Especially to protect the very people banned from entering this country on humanitarian grounds? See the disconnect Brook? BTW.... The Syrians are already launching aircraft from that same air base we just bombed. http://nypost.com/2017/04/07/syrian-warplanes-take-off-from-same-air-base-us-bombarded/ Maybe we can go a bit less expensive and use Reaper drones with HE ordinance next time? At least we'd get a real time visual as to what we hit and the result. We wouldn't need 2 guided missile cruisers and thousands of hours of manpower to do that. $60mil is a helluva lot of money for a country several trillion in debt already.
Show me the money. Who in the "entire world" has stepped up to crowd fund the operation? Talk is cheap - too fuckin' cheap.
I think that was why they targeted the jets, ammunition, radar and air defense systems. Not that I agree with the strike since it is time for other countries to either pick up the slack or start paying the U.S. to be the world police.
Pretty easy for a country in the Middle East to lay down some new asphalt, multi-million dollar jets, not so much.
Rumor has it Raytheon is making basic chemical weapons available at no cost to any faction anywhere willing to use them against a populace if cameras will record the horror. It's part of their marketing budget.
