What is an airstrike? is on my mind... As I try to assess our U.S. strategy against ISIS, I am inundated with airstrike numbers. 100 in so many days. 200 in a week. I was picturing my experience, in a Navy Attack Squadron in 1970 or so, when I might have considered an airstrike as, what we referred to, as an Alfa or Alpha Strike. Tens of A-6s, A-7s, A-4s, A-1s, F-8s and F-4s providing the other guys with shock and awe. One (1) A-6 might carry 6 tons of boom-boom. I also pictured Air Force Arc-Light missions....Perhaps three B-52s carpet bombing a huge area. I do not recall, by the way, the U.S. using these tactics in heavily populated areas. We may not have been as surgical as they are today, over Hanoi and Haiphong, but efforts were made to limit civilian casualties. Apparently, today, our government would call one launch period from the USS KittyHawk, a 2 hour cycle from cat to trap, as 8-10 airstrikes. The Air Wing would do that about 6 times a day, or night, depending on the cycle we were on with other Yankee Station Carriers. Thus, our limited bombing in Vietnam and Laos might have resulted in well over 100 airstrikes in a day (and night). If all we are doing in Syria and Northern Iraq today, against ISIS, is the equivalent of one days work, by two Navy Air Wings, in a week, Im not impressed. During the war in Vietnam, the politicians would not allow our troops to fight. Over 50,000 American men and women died because of politics, and the decisions to ignore military leadership. Early in that war, many of those killed and taken captive were aviators, Navy, Air Force, Marine and Army. No troops on the ground, in the North to help, fight or save. I, personally, find these ISIS folks a lot scarier than the folks we fought in SE Asia.
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 19:39:39 +0000
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