Posted on 10/01/2015 11:57:17 AM PDT by lodi90
The U.S. Air Force’s senior intelligence officer said Thursday that Russia lacked precision-guided weapons for its bombing campaign in Syria and would likely inflict substantial civilian casualties as a result.
Lt. Gen. Robert P. Otto, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, told reporters in Washington that it appeared the Russian forces were using “dumb bombs” instead of weapons guided by lasers or satellites. The Russian air strike campaign began Wednesday in areas north of the city of Homs that are controlled by anti-government rebels.
“To me, it was representative of what you’d expect from dumb bombs, being dropped from airplanes at medium altitudes, which is not that impressive,” Otto told journalists from the Defense Writers Group.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
And that's why this campaign is likely to be effective.
He has to do this on the cheap. Russia is out of dough. Every month that goes by where oil is below $100 is another month closer to Russia falling apart financially. It’s worse in Iran.
Question: Why are the Chinese involved in Syria again if all this is about is ISIS?
hey,, nothing like a 500 pounder landing on your head.. or the roof of your mud hut.
They're collecting intel.
The Russians may be cutting a moral corner. I do not know. But, then, most of us applauded when they dispensed with a trial or even any legalistic niceties, when they had a dealing with the pirates off of Somalia.
While understanding the horror of Hiroshima & Nagasaki, I have always accepted that Truman did the right thing, and actually saved both American & Japanese lives, by cutting to the chase in that manner.
If you don’t care about collateral damage and civilian casualties, why use the good (and expensive) stuff?
Besides not needing to use their PGMs, I’m sure protecting knowlege of their precision capabilities under real combat conditions is part of Russias decision process.
“Russia lacked precision-guided weapons for its bombing campaign in Syria”
“I find that hard to believe.”
They are having a bit of a logistical issue getting there. I presume they are using Syrian bombs (originally made by the Russians) that Assad has “in stock” and saving back the expensive PGB.
Again, blowing up everything is a better strategy to break the will of a people.
Think: Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Killing soldiers is one thing, but when you level the town, people quit fighting.
The USA should have just leveled every town and city in North Vietnam, for example, if it wanted to win that war. Instead, it blew up some stuff, but largely just a lot of jungle.
“Dumb bums using dumb bombs”
We introduced guided weapons in order to take out small, hard to hit targets, but that soon got morphed into an ROE requirement.
Modern ballistic gravity bombing is very accurate if all you are trying to do is take out a building. Instead of one thousand pound JDAM, the Ruskies drop six thousand pounders. Net result of both is building destroyed.
And although we worry about collateral damage, the Ruskies and Assad will see it as bonus kills.
So the bombings have started, and the finger pointing and trash-talking has begin. The U.S says the Russians are not hitting ISIS targets.
But isn’t it strange that we haven’t heard a THING from ISIS?
I noticed from one video Ivan was dropping cluster bombs. Ivan don’t give a **** about collateral damage.
Dam i read that headline first as “Dumb Blonde”
Russia will go in and carpet-bomb the crap out of the area figuring it’s better to kill 1000 civilians if it gets them 1 ISIS fighter. We’ll see how that goes over with the locals.
Pour encourager les autres.
Wasn’t it Randolph Churchill who said “The Arab is either at your feet or at your throat.”
Because you'll miss your target? Allied bombers used to go out in 1000 aircraft formations because that's what they needed to do in order to hit their targets. A couple of dozen aircraft aren't sufficient to either terrorize enemy civilians into submission (something that 1000-aircraft* Allied firebombings were never able to do, anyway) or hit enemy military targets. If the Russians are using dumb bombs, they are delivering more airstrikes than Assad could on his own, but they are not giving him a capability he doesn't already have.
* Each B-17 might carry 8 500lb bombs, meaning that a 1000-bomber raid would result in 8,000 bombs being dropped in a matter of an hour or so, vs the dozens that can be dropped from the few Russian aircraft deployed.
“More rubble, less trouble” - Wiunston Spencer Churchill.
Modern avionics have improved targeting for dumb bombs far beyond what B-17s and other bombers with the Norden bombsite could do in WWII.
The Israelis took out the Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 using eight very early model (A model Block 10s, i think) F-16s with dumb bombs.
The Russian dumb bomb targeting is going to be at least as advanced as that.
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