Somehow I strongly doubt this.
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We wouldn’t want to go down the “who benefits” rabbit hole.
Kabuki Tomahawk Theater
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I don’t think they are, which goes to my point. You need an aircraft-delivered JDAM or other specialised bomb (e.g. BLU-107) to penetrate a runway, and there was no way the Russians would allow a plane through. Launching the Tomahawks was equivalent to doing a shoddy (but showy, always showy) job of damaging the airbase, so if there was a deal the choice of weapon was doubtless part of it.
If the Syrians were also pre-warned so they could move their aircraft out of harm’s way this deal would basically turn into Putin giving his orange buddy permission to act like a big guy in Syria without doing serious damage to his chin-free buddy’s airstrip. That works out for Vlad in a number of ways.
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“We’re very thankful to Sen. McCain on the Senate Armed Services Committee and Congresswoman McSally on the House Armed Services Committee for leading the charge to restore funding to programs like Tomahawk” missiles, Taylor Lawrence, president of Raytheon’s missile systems said last summer.
Jobs AND Theater
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Optimism on my part.
Darn it! I had July 4th in my office pool.
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I was guessing we’d be in Iran by June, and Trump would lay off Syria since there’s nothing to ‘win.’ Had no idea he’d poke the NK hornet nest so fast either.
Still, the date is disturbingly symbolic.
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It’s better than that. The irony of attacking the SAA with missiles while at the same time killing twice as many civilians bombing Mosul in the last two days is striking, as is the large number of kids dying in Yemen because of the bombing of food warehouses.
I don’t even know how we know what we supposedly know. Who was the witness?
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I think there’s an error in your premises, although your logic is clean.
No matter whether they wanted to or not, I’m pretty sure Russia doesn’t have any air defense in Syria capable of stopping a Tomahawk strike. The Tomahawks are designed specifically to defeat Russian methods of air defense (including those which do not rely on detection at all - “quantity has a quality all its own”). Tomahawks are a nuclear capable MAD weapon.
Basically, a Tomahawk is launched from a place you didn’t know it was, and it strikes before you even know it was coming. It can reliably hit a ten-foot object after traveling hundreds of miles. And the Tomahawk takes flying below effective radar to a new nadir. When I was working on them, they were capable of flying ten feet off the deck, through cities and mountains and woods, using contour matching technology. But more recent versions use image matching technology, and they can dodge obstacles that aren’t in their pre-programming. By now I imagine the only reason they can’t fly through sewer systems is that they go too fast to make the turns!
Even as far back as the V1 doodlebug, a cruise missile has always been a kami-kaze suicide aircraft with a robot pilot. The Tomahawk has had a number of different iterations with different payload mountings, including nuclear and cluster munitions, and ground penetration would be no problem; just pop up from level flight at the target site and deliver the package straight down. 500 pounds or more of high explosive is pretty devastating, and that’s the bird’s simplest payload.
But remember the Tomahawk is a terror weapon, a surgical strike weapon, not just a weapon of mass destruction. It does exactly what you tell it with unequaled precision, and it’s entirely possible that the White House has sent a message we don’t know about yet. I would love to know exactly why General McMaster chose that specific target - by all accounts the man is not stupid, and I’m sure he did exactly as much damage as he intended.
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Exactly. If the U.S. military wanted to FUBAR that airport it could have. It was all kabuki. Expensive kabuki at the big boy table.
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And yet nukes aren’t.
Well, there is the Nuclear “Non” Proliferation Treaty, for whatever that’s worth…
Speculation, submitted for your viewing.
DT: "They’re all over me, I tell you! Every day there’s another Russian meeting found! It’s bad, the worst!"
VP: "Don’t panic. I have an idea. Look in Obama’s old files for ‘Operation Redline’. I’ll have BalA gas some people, then you tell the military to execute that plan. It’s a missile strike on an airbase. Lots of fireworks, we’ll be officially upset with you, and no one will question your connections with Russia again."
DT: "BalA will go for that?"
VP: "Sure, he loves to gas his people! Besides, he’ll have a few days to put all the good planes underground and park the wrecks on the surface."
DT: "You’re the best, VP. I owe you one!"
VP: “Yes.”
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DT: "Where should we send Kushner next?"
VP: "Afganistan"
Ivanka: “He’ll need a new suit”
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It’s hard to really interpret well, but the images of the damage and satellite imagery show some damage, but nothing that would actually deny use of the airfield, which is consistent with the reports of it being back in use already. A few reinforced hangars were hit, but most not. The runway’s untouched.
The FoxtrotAlpha guy’s take is that Tomahawks are basically useless for damaging an airfield and this was political move.
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And there are munitions that are designed to destroy runways.
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Probably want something like this:
(except legal)
EDIT: and now I see that both systems mentioned in reply to you were brought up in the FA article…
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And Russia knows this is bullshit too. It’s a message and nothing more.
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