Posted on 11/25/2017 11:15:13 AM PST by Trump_vs_Evil_Witch
16-years after the Bush administration began military operations in Afghanistan, President Trump has just launched a military campaign of his own using high-tech stealth fighters to bomb drug labs in the country....On Monday, the Defense Department said it unleashed F-22 Raptor stealth fighters to bomb narcotic production facilities in southern Afghanistan targeting the revenue streams of the Taliban...
.....Every since the U.S. started occupying the country in the early 2000s, OPIUM PRODUCTION SOARED. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said without drugs, the war in Afghanistan “would have been long over.”....."In 2017, Afghanistan’s opium crop and production both HIT A RECORD HIGH.....The strikes Sunday hit seven Taliban drug laboratories and a headquarters in three districts across northern Helmand. Three occurred in Kajaki district, four in Musa Qala and one in Sangin — all areas controlled by the U.S. military at the height of Obama’s troop surge there...
...Until now, though, those U.S. efforts have not directly involved the military. During the early post-Taliban years, the Pentagon focused exclusively on pursuing al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents and expressly avoided diverting efforts toward curbing the drug trade..."
(Excerpt) Read more at marketarmor.com ...
Of course if this mission is successful, it will be given all of the coverage in the MSM as Trump’s immediate smack down of ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
By which I mean there will be no MSM coverage.
Besides, the stealth planes don't give the Afghan Army a chance to warn their employers. The game rules have changed.
Urgency of mission objective within the available assets and time window, whatever it is.
Further, this mission could have been executed by any CINC in the last 15 years.
It never was.
Same with taking out ISIS. After our victories in in Iraq, most notably during the Surge, we were the strongest tribe over there.
We could have taken out the “Varsity Team” of ISIS immediately at a moments notice.
But this order was never given by the command authority in DC.
So many lives could have been saved, and so much suffering averted.
If it moves, kill it.
Since when can the F-22 deliver jdams? Pretty sure it’s A to A only.
I'm guessing some Afghan radar operators have been bribed by the drug lords. F-22's get to fly under the radar, in a manner of speaking.
I think the same thing. Losing one stealth fighter costs more money that all the opium refineries combined.
Weapons have to be tested under real life conditions. Afghanistan is perfect for this, given that crashed aircraft can be recovered (unlike what happened to the F-117A in Serbia). I'm inclined to say that it's good that a new live-fire range has opened up, without subjecting these aircraft to seizure and detailed examination by near-peer competitors if one of them falls from the sky. Helps to work the kinks out of weapons systems.
I’m just cynical enough to agree with that. LOL
Good strategy.
At the same time he is cutting of the Taliban's main source of income. Same as in Iraq and Syria after we destroyed their capacity to generate operating funds through oil, the entire calafate began to implode and was gone in under a year.
We should have done this in the beginning.
http://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104506/f-22-raptor/
I’ll be darned. Is that a weapon pod or are the munitions stored inside the standard closed bay?
Internally.
My thoughts exactly, why is this expensive platform there.?
What do I have to say. I AGREE! I was commenting on the current mission ops. We all know what was not done is the past is just that, the past.
Hoping the Agent Orange statement was a JOKE, although not Laughing
Good reply
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