Thanks for the opportunity.
This scenario takes me back to 1968 over Laos in a C-123K and it’s truck killing night mission. I was at NKP, Spectre was South at Ubon, RTAB with somewhat the same mission only more crewmembers, much more expensive aircraft at a lower altitude and thus more susceptible to anti-aircraft fire.
To pit the nations air power against a ten thousand dollar truck is gross misuse of finite resources. There has to be a better way of striking the enemy without squandering an extremely valuable resource. Not to mention advertising your presence to any convienient radar.
As I recall, there was at least one Spectre gunship that was destroyed and another so heavily damaged by anti-aircraft guns it would never fly again while cruising “the trail” in search of enemy activity. A heavy price to pay for the small disruption the nightly activity had on the passage of men and equipment from North Vietnam to South Vietnam.
...and here we are in a much higher threat environment doing much the same as fifty plus years ago. Show of force is one thing, sending millions of dollars of equipment, and highly trained aircrew after one truck smacks of (fill in the blank).
Exactly. Hence my “2. If these Iran proxies are getting ‘al-Aqsa1’ quality missiles, why is the US military not taking offensive action?”