[jdege]

WTF are they dropping onto a field that is already secured?

Or rather, wouldn't they have been better served landing at the airport and driving to where they are going?

A soldier who's just jumped out of an airplane is pretty much stationary - he's not going anywhere very fast.

To do their job in Kosovo, they're going to need vehicles. And they could just as easily have matched up with the vehicles at the airport instead of having someone drive them out to BFE just so they could get another pip on their jump wings.

[archy]

A soldier who's just jumped out of an airplane is pretty much stationary - he's not going anywhere very fast.

To do their job in Kosovo, they're going to need vehicles. And they could just as easily have matched up with the vehicles at the airport instead of having someone drive them out to BFE just so they could get another pip on their jump wings.

The 206 Russian VDV desantniki who jumped onto and secured the Pristina airfield at Kosovo did a pretty good job of it, and so long as the French aren't under fire, they might as well get a little good training in such operations- you don't really see that much of mass jumps these days. Mors ex-coellum.

[Bald Eagle777]

I was thinking along the same lines. An airborne operation isn't really called for here. LZ is secure; other ways to deploy that make a heck of a lot more sense. It's just an asinine way for them to make a pompous, dramatic statement with little military application. "The French have arrived from the air!!!!" So what? Who cares?

Once again the French demonstrate how vain and useless they are from a practical military standpoint.

I would like to see them try to land on a hardened bunker complex miles (KM?) behind enemy lines in a hot LZ taking srious AAA with no prospect of resupply for at least a week once on the ground. Would they? Could they?

We know the 82nd and 101st could take their breakfast and pee on their campfire any day of the week.