Posted on 11/17/2015 11:21:07 PM PST by Mariner
The worst enemy is in the white house.
Ha ha. The die hard russophobes who still live in the days of hiding under your desk from the soviet union.
No other large bomber can, and nobody else’s bomber can do it by itself. The F-15E Strike Eagle does not have fully automated terrain following radar guidance; it has TFR, but it’s a separate pod and you lose weapons carriage if you fit it and IIRC the aircraft cannot use it to ingress at supersonic speeds below 500 feet. Nor does it have any attention paid to radar cross section reduction, the USAF decided not to pay for the upgrade kits.
ahh ok, I’m following you.
I thought they just meant that nothing else can fly at that altitude over the speed of sound heh.
That would seem to be a nice feature of their bomber I suppose. We in the west better wake up and cut our social spending and start beefing up our military prowess.
I don’t think it’s that. Mabye a few of them but I think for most, their posts show they just don’t want Obama to look bad.
If you look at the people that screamed the loudest, you will find they also fought like fiends for Lesser Evil republicans “no matter what”. As we see, those Republicans sided with Obama completely to finance Obama’s terrorists.
People can say “Oh BS!” all they want. The facts are what they are. There is no logical reason to trash someone when he’s doing something good. Putin may be a lot of things. But in this case, he’s doing what America, under an American president, has traditionally done. The right thing.
It’s not exactly a meaningless achievement either. Many radar guided air defense systems have a 500 foot altitude floor, i.e., they can’t track anything moving at range below 500 feet. Being able to fly in automated TFR mode at mach below that altitude is a big advantage.
I agree with you that Russia is really targeting the other rebels in Syria, more than ISIS.
It seems to have been Russian strategy all along to prop up their ally Assad, and make Syria a choice between Assad or ISIS.
Current opinion after the Paris attack, makes their job easy. Everybody in the West wants ISIS flattened now, and Russia says they will bomb ISIS. It is the old KGB motto: “Tell them what they want to hear”.
There is a lot of danger in how things might shake out, but that area is so complex that I think it would be so hard for anyone to bring a Grand Master Plan through to fruition.
I think that it is likely that everyone will keep fighting, demolishing more than building, and spending fortunes on war rather than investing in productive assets.
It is a high stakes gain with that huge flow of oil wealth at stake, but since the existing regimes suck so badly, having any one win might be the worst case.
I think that Hollande is just covering his butt from domestic politics. He needs to make a big political gesture of attacking ISIS, and no doubt seeks to impede further attacks in France, which really strengthens his political opponents at home.
He is the French political equivalent of Obama here, a socialist who overwhelmingly gets the votes of the muslim minority (muslims are a bigger percentage of the electorate in France than blacks are in the USA, and they tend to vote lock step for Hollande’s Party).
The French foreign policy establishment though, endures across different political administrations. So even if Hollande attacks ISIS as a tactic, the foreign policy establishment will tend to be more steady strategically.
The establishment is wedded to Europe, and likely seek a way to manage the islamist threat long term. Because they have a huge domestic muslim radical problem, and have a preference for having someone else out in the lead to catch all the blowback, they could well be tempted by having Russia lead, if the USA is not doing the job. Because they are so central to the European Project, they would be an influential lever to move Europe’s position as a whole. Public opinion inflamed by terrorist attacks is a tool that Putin has used before to advance his agenda.
Although events might move France closer to Russia for a while, a lot of ties hold it in the West. They have been involved in the whole anti-Assad project for years under Hollande, and will still have the USA, Turkey and Saudi Arabia whispering in their ears. They may be whispering to double-cross the Russians. The situation in Syria will probably change pretty quickly, from a historical perspective, so it is hard to base a firm prediction on those shifting sands.
The Obama administration has approved big sales of precision munitions (JDAM GPS-guided and Paveway laser-guided) to both Turkey and Saudi Arabia in just the last week or two - enough for a major campaign in Syria. I don’t know if they would have the balls, but they will have the capability.
Probably no other theater on Earth is as Byzantine and treacherous as this one - endless entertainment for armchair analysts like me.
Up to this point everybody but Republicans have been pounding our President, possibly Sheen included.
Obama Fubar Obama Fubar
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