Tuesday, June 20, 2017

You Had One Job

The Air Force is our resident expert on dropping bombs and other explody devices from airplanes.

So how was this possible?
On Aug. 7, 2014, the United States kicks off air strikes against the brutal terrorists in Iraq, beginning attacks on its members in neighboring Syria the following month. But between August and November 2014, the Air Force saw between 11 and 19 percent of weapons either not have the intended effect or not detonate entirely, according to a briefing Air Force Major Brian Baker gave at the National Defense Industry Association’s Precision Strike Annual Review in March 2017.

The problem was that the Air Force in Afghanistan had been using bombs designed for close air support--using smaller amounts of explosives or air bursts using shrapnel--to avoid killing friendly troops nearby while precision killed the enemy.

When switched to Iraq to fight ISIL which in June had overrun Mosul and northern Iraq, the Air Force largely went after targets far from friendly troops with the same weapons when they would have been better targeted by larger bombs with bigger explosions.


I'm not even sure what to say.