Posted on 09/15/2014 8:27:54 AM PDT by SZonian
On September 10, only hours before the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, President Obama summoned the nation to a renewed campaign against Islamic terrorists in the Middle East. Using one of several names for the fanatics who have seized large swaths of Syria and Iraq, the president said, “This counterterrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL, wherever they exist, using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground.”
As the president’s words indicate, precise application of air power is crucial to this plan. The U.S. has already bombed over 200 terrorist targets, and now the air campaign will expand. But there is a lot more to U.S. air power than smart bombs: the bombs aren’t much use unless we can find the enemy, and once the extremists realize they are under continuous attack they will adopt the same elusive tactics that have made defeating them so hard in previous campaigns.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
The GH still can't carry as many different ISR payloads as the U2, so it can't be diverted to perform another type of mission while in flight. This is one notable weakness in the platform and the other is that it is not until it is near the end of its mission profile that it is able to achieve near to maximum ceiling.
This administration is evil...eliminating the U-2 prior to having a legitimate replacement is criminal...the law even "says so", yet this administration, as has been shown, is "above the law".
Obama is trying to cripple US military power because he believes it just isn’t fair that the US is a superpower and other countries aren’t.
Agreed.
The White House islamist
So how many times has the U-2 been formally retired now? Six or seven?
It is very hard to get rid of a platform. You can’t kill the U-2 it has been undead for years. Cheney staked the heart of the V-22 3 times. Who looks better now?
Is there a drone variant of J-STARS? Seems like J-STARS would be more effective than an U-2.
[grammar police please note, does not “an” seem awkward in front of that vowel?]
What about the Aurora? Wasn't existence of that aircraft accidentally made public in an unclassifed Congressional report?
No drone but IAI has created a Lear Jet JSTARS an it is selling to many countries includeing the USA....
The civilized world is not safe until every single member of ISIS is dead.
I loved it when they discovered if they ran the radar tapes backward they could tell from where vehicles came. This would be perfect.
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