I believe the hit in Afghanistan is much bigger than we’ll ever know. Our guys must have done a little recon to come up with “the right site”.
I hope you are right
“I believe the hit in Afghanistan is much bigger than we’ll ever know. Our guys must have done a little recon to come up with “the right site”.”
That happens when you have good intel people and allow them to do their job and report the intel without PC BS!
Then allow your generals and admirals to act on that intel.
“Our guys must have done a little recon to come up with “the right site”.”
No doubt. Afghanistan has long been characterized by the use of caves and tunnels in warfare. Because they receive very little rainfall for most of the year, they have long relied on cisterns to catch snowmelt off the mountains for irrigation.
Even back when the Mongols invaded, the locals were using their underground tunnels to shelter from and maneuver around the Mongols. Twice in Afghan history, extensive damage was done to the irrigation infrastructure, to prevent the Afghans from using it in war - the Mongols and the Russians (1980’s).
Bin Laden, poured a lot of money into improving the caves at Tora Bora (about fifty miles away from the caves we hit with the MOAB), into a fortress capable of holding a garrison of 1,000.
It is likely that those caves we just hit, so close to the main road/historic invasion route through the Khyber Pass have long been used, and are very well known in the history of the local people, including those now in the Afghan Government and Army. The ISIS guys in those caves were likely buying supplies and heading in and out of the local towns - everybody has cell phones, and they are very chatty.
Drones have probably been surveilling the site for a long time, and human intelligence was likely developed as well.
They would not drop a heavy bomb without confidence in the target, much less a MOAB.