Posted on 05/21/2013 9:51:55 AM PDT by Pan_Yan
U.S. aerial tankers have flown more than 200 missions this year to fuel French airpower supporting Paris’ intervention against al Qaeda linked extremists in Mali.
The aid underscores NATO’s reliance on U.S. military capabilities to stage even their own unilateral operations.
Air Force Times reported the U.S. Air Force’s 351st Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron, forward deployed to Morón Air Base, Spain, from RAF Mildenhall, in Suffolk, England, has offloaded more than eight million pounds of fuel in 204 separate missions in support of the French Air Force as of May 15.
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But French forces could not have gotten to Mali, nor would they have had air support, without U.S. air transport and refueling capabilities.
Through February, the Air Force flew 47 sorties of C-17 cargo planes, moving 1,200 tons of equipment and supplies along with 975 passengers into Mali.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
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Wait, what?
It would have been cool if on Sep 11, 2012 they diverted one of those sorties to Benghazi instead of Mali, and helped some Americans out, instead whatever we are doing there.
Dien Bien Phu taught us that the French are incapable of doing this on their own.
google “mali gold”
wtf
It's okay; I'm sure we're charging them.
(I almost said that with a straight face)
I've almost jumped over the cliff and bought the theory that it was a batched staged kidnapping.
But this raises a very interesting question...very often during contingency ops, a tanker is maintained on strip alert 24/7, for emergency refueling missions. It’s not very far from Moron to the waters off Libya, so if a tanker and crew were on alert, they could have been airborne in a matter of minutes (depending on their alert posture), providing support to airlifters flying spec ops forces from Europe to Benghazi, an AC-130 gunship, or even F-16s from Aviano.
Congressman Issa, tell your staff to contact the Tanker Airlift Coordination Center at Scott AFB, IL. They can easily tell you the status of tankers at Moron on September 11, 2012.
Maybe the French are paying for the gas.
Well this is one thing I been wondering for awhile. We have forces in about 30 African countries. Is there nothing to suppoort them? No system to evacuate them in these sh!tholes? Apparently not. I would think such a system would be in North Africa Africa would be the most effective. In addition we are working with tons of “allies”,were none of them availaable?
Swiping your debit card at the tanker must be a bear.
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