Drones Alone

They are relentless predators. They never sleep, never stop and cannot be killed. They tote death, annihilation and misery to enemies.

They are Great Satan's all weather killer drones.

Now that it's official COIN has been short changed in AFPAK - drones alone remain the "Only Game In Town"and are reproducing at a wonderfully crunk exponential rate!

"...Pentagon now has some 7,000 aerial drones, compared with fewer than 50 a decade ago. Within the next decade the Air Force anticipates a decrease in manned aircraft but expects its number of “multirole” aerial drones like the Reaper — the ones that spy as well as strike — to nearly quadruple, to 536. Already the Air Force is training more remote pilots, 350 this year alone, than fighter and bomber pilots combined."

In the next decade, doing drones and spy guys and spy girls who grant literally killer knowledge will increase:

Drones Gone Wild has been way good in Land of the Pure where that magical risible 'sovereignty' prohibs NATO militaries from practising their deadly arts on those double Durand liners:

"...Every time Great Satan's ground forces have entered its territory—most recently in the raid that killed ObL—Pakistan has freaked out. But Pakistani leaders have tolerated drone strikes that killed nearly 2,000 insurgents in the country's frontier provinces over the past five years. In fact, since the ObL raid, the drone strikes have escalated and spread.

The infamous Counter You Know What Plan?

"...So the U.S. is preparing to fight on without Pakistan's help. The backup plan is to move our drones to Afghan bases and fly them into Pakistan from there. And as we pull out of Afghanistan, we'd leave drones in place. That way, we can continue to hunt al-Qaida in both countries even when, as a human presence, we're no longer there.

Not only in the AFPAK Theatre - but all over CENTCOM, bay bee

"...The regime in Yemen, like the one in Pakistan, prefers that we fight this enemy with drones rather than ground forces.

"...Until now, the drone war in Yemen has been run by the U.S. military. But the military has screwed up. First it misidentified a target and killed a Yemeni envoy. Then it failed three times to take out Awlaki. But the bigger problem is that the Yemeni regime is unraveling. Its collaboration with U.S. forces has collapsed. Its political opponents want to take over and end U.S. military operations.

"...The same nonexit strategy. We're putting extra CIA officers in Yemen and instructing the agency to run an expanded drone campaign based outside the country.

"...We're also flying killer drones over Libya. But there, we're waging an open military conflict in concert with NATO. What's significant about Pakistan and Yemen is that they're off the books. We use drones instead of ground troops. We don't even send pilots who can be shot down. We put the CIA in charge of the war so we don't have to respect the laws of war.* And we build bases outside the country so we can conduct the entire operation by remote control, except for the collection of targeting intelligence, which we leave to the CIA.

"...None of this is diabolical. It's evolution. Al-Qaida, with its network of terrorist cells diffused among failed states, is an organism well-designed to evade conventional warfare. We, in turn, are evolving to fight the new threat. In a world of political chaos, waning American power, unstable allies, untrustworthy friends, and enemies who obey no rules, we're developing a new kind of war that we can wage from regional air bases with killer machines in the air fed by covert human networks on the ground. 

"...And the scary thing isn't that it might work. The scary thing is that it might not.

Pic - "Even as the mission in Afghanistan is fizzling out, the campaign against al-Qaeda is succeeding".

Drone Deets

In the 1st decade of the new millennium, Great Satan"s spending on dozens of Drones Gone Wild projects has increased exponentially, from like $350 million in 2001 to $4.1 billion in 2011! According to a  thing filled with paper with writing all in it by the Teal Group Corporation, worldwide spending on drone technology will prob be sump like $11.4 billion by 2020!

CIC gives up the money shots on Drone chiz au courant:

Killer Drones
General Atomics’ MQ-1 Predator drone (pictured) debuted during the mid-1990s, when it was deployed for surveillance and reconnaissance missions over the Balkans. Today, the Predator and its bigger, more powerful variant, the MQ-9 Reaper, are the  weapons of choice in the War on Terror. Their powerful sensors and loiter endurance of up to 40 hours enable the military and CIA to discretely take high-quality pictures and live-streaming videos, intercept cellphone conversations, and drop laser-guided missiles on enemy targets from five (Predator) to 10 (Reaper) miles above the ground.

According to the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Great Satan’s growing fleet of hunter-killers has carried out an estimated 272 drone strikes in Pakistan alone under 44 (compared to 52 under 43). An unknown number have also been authorized in Yemen and Somalia. While the legality and long-term effectiveness of drone strikes remain controversial, drone strikes have proven successful in eliminating many of al-Qaeda’s senior commanders – including its second-in-command, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, who was killed by a drone strike in northern Pakistan – and weakening its operational core.

Great Satan"s Customs and Border Protection have also started using unarmed Predators and Reapers to patrol the northern and southern borders for drug smugglers and illegal immigrants.

Tactical Military Drones 
A congressional report released in January 2012 reveals that more than one-third – or 7,494 – of American military aircraft are now unmanned. The most prolific drone is AeroVironment’s RQ-11 Raven (pictured) – there are approximately 5,346 of these aircraft.

The $56,000 hand-launched, battery-powered drone weighs 4.2 lbs. and can fly at line-of-sight ranges of up to 10 kilometres for 60 to 90 minutes at a time. Equipped with colour video and infrared cameras, soldiers on the ground use Ravens to patrol bases and convoys, explore unfamiliar territory, spot snipers and roadside bombs, and conduct other low-altitude surveillance and reconnaissance missions before they enter potentially dangerous situations.

The next generation of Ravens, currently being developed by AeroVironment and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), will have both autonomous flight and precision strike capabilities.

Stealth Fighter Drones
December 2011, citizens of Cowley County, Kan., spotted what appeared to be a 30-foot wide flying saucer travelling down Highway 77 on the back of a flatbed lorry. It was soon revealed that the alien cargo was the wingless fuselage of Northrop Grumman’s most advanced stealth combat drone – the X-47B 
 
The X-47B program, which has cost an estimated US$813 million and consists of two nearly identical unmanned aircraft, is part of the Navy’s Unmanned Combat Air System Carrier Demonstration program. The computer-controlled X-47B will be capable of taking off from, and landing on, the deck of an aircraft carrier, refuelling itself in flight, and conducting pre-programmed missions using GPS navigation, all without a pilot either in cockpit or on the ground. The X-47B will be equipped with numerous sensors for high surveillance and reconnaissance missions, and will have two weapons bays that together carry up to 4,500 lbs.

 Swarm Drones
In early 2012, robotics researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP lab made headlines when they released footage of their new “nano quadrotors” (pictured). The video shows one nano quadrotor doing flips and another stabilizing itself after being tossed into the air. It also shows a network of 20 nano quadrotors arranging themselves and flying in synchronized formations, including a figure-eight pattern. Each nano quadrotor is self-sensing and therefore capable of autonomously detecting and avoiding obstacles in its flight path. The goal is to combine bio-inspired drones with swarm technology to create a system of vehicles capable of operating in potentially hostile environments – like disaster areas and warzones – with little or no direct human supervision.

Larger drones can also be incorporated into swarm networks. In July 2011, for example, Boeing used two of its ScanEagle drones in a mock surveillance and reconnaissance swarm over eastern Oregon. The portable, catapult-launched drones – which have a wingspan of 10.2 ft., weigh nearly 40 lbs., and can fly as high as 16,000 ft. at 80 mph for 20 hours – simultaneously searched a test area and mapped terrain while communicating with each other, and with operators on the ground. This will improve efficiency by preventing drones from performing overlapping missions. 

Likewise, drone swarms will allow multiple drones to track a target as he or she moves in and out of a drone’s scan area, thus providing operators with better situational awareness.

Spy Drones
In 2009,  Air Force drones over Iraq and Afghanistan collected 24 years’ worth of continuous video footage. Starting this spring, the  Army’s newest unmanned spycraft will collect more than three times that amount – nearly 80 years’ worth of high-definition video – in one day.
 
The Boeing A-160 Hummingbird (pictured) is a 6,500-lb. helicopter-style drone that, unlike other drones, is capable of autonomous flight, hovering for extended periods of time, and vertical take-off and landing. It can fly as high as 30,000 ft. – approximately three-times higher than conventional helicopters – at speeds of up to 160 mph for 24 hours at a time.

The A-160 Hummingbird’s most coveted feature, however, is its Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance-Imaging System, or ARGUS-IS. Named after the mythological Greek hundred-eyed giant Argus Panoptes, meaning “all-seeing,” the ARGUS-IS is a 1.8 gigapixel camera system with 65 independent and steerable “windows” that allow operators to survey 36 square miles at once. This means that the A-160 Hummingbird can automatically and simultaneously track a group of individuals even when they split up and travel in many different directions.

Over the next year, the Army will deploy and test three A-160 Hummingbirds in Afghanistan. The stated uses are surveillance, reconnaissance and communications missions, target acquisition, and re-supply operations.

Supersonic Drones
DARPA launched its second test flight of a rocket-launched hypersonic drone in August 2011. The Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV-2) (pictured), manufactured by Lockheed Martin, successfully detached from its Minotaur IV rocket and travelled over the Pacific Ocean at 20 times the speed of sound, or approximately 3.6 miles per second, for nine minutes before losing contact with ground control. The HTV-2, which has thus far cost an estimated US$320 million, is part of the U.S. government’s effort to develop technology capable of striking targets anywhere on the globe within one hour.


Pic - "30 years in the future military"

Internationally Illicit

 

Oh - you didn't know?

It's true!! Great Satan und her wild und wicked Drones Gone Wild are totally ruining the entire world!! 

See,

Drones have serious disadvantages. They create rage in the countries where they are used, such as Pakistan. If, as is evident, they are carried out with the connivance of Islamabad, this discredits the government as American proxies. Exact figures about civilian casualties are often mythical since outsiders do not know who is living in family compounds in Afghanistan or north-west Pakistan (witness the time it took for intelligence to find ObL in his Abbottabad compound).

 Drones Gone Wild! have been unleashed over Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq. In Pakistan alone some 337 CIA strikes have killed 1,908 to 3,225 people since 2004, according to the Washington-based New America Foundation. Of these, between 1,618 and 2,769 are said to have been militants.

The drones make more political sense at home than military sense abroad. Whatever the accuracy of the missiles, targets must still be identified before they are destroyed, requiring good local information. Where the local state is weak or nonexistent, as in Yemen, Somalia, Libya or Waziristan in north-west Pakistan, this is easy to do because the CIA can have its own network of agents or co-operate with local intelligence agencies. (Those slanted letters were slanted via moi - for especial emphasis LOL)

Secret assassination campaigns by drones, hot-air balloons, bombs or rare poisons all carry the risk that somebody, somewhere is plotting their retaliation.  

And.

Must.

Stay.

Awake.

Foreign Peace Mongers at the UN are gon fire up War Crime investigations against Great Satan for Drones Gone Wild early in 2013

UN's Especial Rapporteur (a distinct spoken word poetry performed in time to a beat) Ben Emmerson, like most Peace Mongers, is like, totally worried about the wrong thing.

Check it - 

"Together with my colleague Christof Heyns, [the UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings], I will be launching an investigation unit within the special procedures of the [UN] Human Rights Council to inquire into individual drone attacks."

"The global war paradigm has done immense damage to a previously shared international consensus on the legal framework underlying both international human rights law and international humanitarian law," he said. "It has also given a spurious justification to a range of serious human rights and humanitarian law violations.

"The [global] war paradigm was always based on the flimsiest of reasoning, and was not supported even by close allies of Great Satan. The 44th administration initially retreated from this approach, but over the past 18 months it has begun to rear its head once again, in briefings by administration officials seeking to provide a legal justification for the drone programme of targeted killing in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia …"

 "Since 44 took office at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims and more than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. Christof Heyns … has described such attacks, if they prove to have happened, as war crimes. I would endorse that view."

Gee sir, since Drones Gone Wild op op operate over a wide range on nation/states (of sorts) that cannot - for whatever reasons impose and up hold Writ of State it actually makes the case the war IS global. And since NATO, Japan and other countries hopped on board the train - wishing it was flimsy sans allies - is only a wish - and not a very informed one either.

Plus,  

"Contrary to conventional wisdom, we see little evidence that these actions are generating widespread anti-American sentiment or recruits for AQAP.... In short, targeted strikes against the most senior and most dangerous AQAP terrorists are not the problem, they are part of the solution."

And such sexyful solutions are sweetly swaying just in reach 

 While most Pakistanis deplore the drones when polled about them, FATA residents who have first-hand knowledge of specific strikes and who really died in them are, "very positive.... They know who's being killed."

While the risk of backlash against Drones Gone Wild!! attacks maybe real, the alternatives are worse because they would cause even more unintended casualties -- American, allied, and civilian -- while doing less damage to the terrorists. It would be ideal to capture terrorists, bring them to justice, and interrogate them rather than kill them yet in the Pakistani tribal lands, "there are no police, there are no law enforcement agencies. When the Pakistani military goes in after insurgents, they're very imprecise and kill loads of ppl, sending thousands of civilians fleeing from their homes.

An American ground attack would be even more costly in human, military, and political terms After 9/11, Great Satan"s initial response to countries that it thought harbored terrorists was to invade, not just bomb specific targets

If Hybrid War truly replaces Total War as abovingly indicated - a drone-deterrence strategery is sweetly blossoming: Drones Gone Wild is how Great Satan stops al-Qaeda from attacking the American homeland, without getting bogged down in protracted wars against insurgents

Pic - "Only game in town, bay bee"

More Than Drones

Way back in the last millennium, when Europa still enjoyed visiting combat ops on each others heads, vKluck's extreme right wing of the vSchlieffen Plan had to endure extreme conditions. Old school footslogging with real horse power maintained an amazingly frantic pace to cover 40 miles a day with full pack and gear. 

When adjutants saw the truppen were dusty, dirty and increasingly out of step - that was cool. When closer inspection revealed they reeked of liq liq liquor and were blind drunk off their assets - they freaked and tattled taled it to General Teutonicus Furor himself.

vKluck blew off their inappropriate handwringing and worrying about the wrong thing:

"Abnormal requirements demand abnormal stimuli"

Could this be not unlike the aperitif betwixt Great Satan and Land of the Pure?

1st glancers and the underwhelmingly uninformed might be forgiven somewhat for thinking of unlinking the dysfunctional nation/state hook up betwixt Great Satan and her only new clear rebellious client army with an illiterate nation state attached. 

"Valuable Allies" that harbor jerks, creeps and killers that torment the Stan and attack American forces from a safe as milk no go zone (which happily happens to enjoy a thin veneer of the sovereignty dodge) ideally could be stymied on the battlefield.

A new clear powered frenemy (just replaced Great Britain as #5 in the Big 5!!) nation state in Intolerantopolis is a diff critter!

As difficult as it might be to conceive of a long-term engagement with Pakistan right now, extremists are less likely to find easy refuge in a globally integrated, democratic, and prosperous Pakistan. Moreover, the stronger Pakistan's democratic institutions become, the less room the Pakistani military and the ISI will have to maneuver -- even if that change is slow and incremental. 

In the process of pursuing strategic depth, and trying to queer the mix on India's "Cold Start Strat" the military has run Pakistan into the ground:

The reckless escalation is likely intended to demonstrate to Washington that nothing is off-limits to Pakistan's Afghan surrogates, and it may even be designed to push Washington to rethink its involvement in helping India expand its presence in Kabul. Pakistan's military believes, somewhat plausibly, that India has used U.S. military cover to increase its intelligence assets on Pakistan's western border, which would allow New Delhi to foment insurgency in Pakistan's resource-rich province of Baluchistan. 

  Admiral Mike's fun friendly deadly psychic warning that Land of the Pure needs to get in gear and handle their murderous kindred spirit proxies or Great Satan will only be too glad to get all unilaterally undulating avec guerre' and deliver precise destruction onto their girl hating heads.


Yet before getting all dosed up beyond repair on Drones Gone Wild! and getting all combatty sans smart power, it may be cool to zoom out of the Drones Alone or More than Drones mindset

Drones make it easier to carry out that threat. But the administration must weigh any expansion of drone strikes against the need to maintain a relationship with Pakistan and promote its moderate political forces in what has become a fateful domestic power struggle. 

 Drones will remain invaluable to preventing terrorist attacks against U.S. targets. But they cannot become a substitute for sustained efforts at nurturing moderate and representative government in the Muslim world. That is as true in Yemen and Somalia as it is in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pic - "I'll just let you know that we are not going to allow these kinds of attacks to go on. I'm not going to talk about how we're going to respond" with Wicked Whitney and Kristy Kreme

AirStation

"Air Launch Drones!"

Airplanes are expensive, powerful, fancy targets. To protect their pilots and keep the investment in the planes safe, the United States Air Force has for decades pursued stealth technologies, designed at hiding planes from hostile sensors. Yet stealth, too, is expensive, and with the increased abilities of unmanned aircraft, in the future there doesn’t have to be a pilot that needs protecting onboard every aircraft. With lots of cheap drones, for the first time in decades the Air Force could fill the skies with aircraft it isn’t afraid to lose.


The biggest challenge, then, is keeping those drones cheap. If the airplane doesn’t need to fly long distances, it can use less fuel or electrical power, and work with smaller engines. The Air Force is already working on these drones. That's fine if the drones will launch from airfields near the action, but war doesn’t always give time for that preparation, so what’s needed is a way to carry the small planes there.

DARPA’s plan is for the drones to launch from adapted cargo planes, and then fly back and land there too. A pair of aviation companies, SAIC and ArcXeon, have an alternative idea: what if the drones took off from and landed on airships, instead?

The concept is called “AirStation”, and it will be a home for “unmanned aerial systems,” the current in-vogue term among defense contractors for drones. From Aviation Week: 

Airships themselves have been proposed as long-endurance surveillance platforms, but U.S. Army and Air Force programs started during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were ultimately canceled. Instead, says [SAIC senior aerospace engineer Ron] Hochstetler, the trend has been toward a more distributed, multiplatform, multisensor capability using small- and medium-size UAS.

But conventional UAS require support infrastructure and “their ground- and ship-based launch sites cannot be quickly relocated as needed, and are often unable to operate on land or ocean areas due to political sensitivities,” Hochstetler argues. “For UAS operations to fully reach their maximum capability, they require the mobility and geographical independence of an airborne support platform dedicated to UAS launch and recovery operations,” he says.

To misuse a saying of questionable origin: If you want to drone fast, drone alone. If you want to drone far, drone together.

More Than Drones

LOL! The multi double tapping Drones Gone Wild returned from Spring Break in Yemen and annihilated several metric tonnes of creepy girl hating intolernant head chopping Great Satan haters.

Instead of getting hot for the "Near Enemy" - local regimes that don't cotton to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's partic brand of m"Hammedism - the Yemen bunch are hot to attack the "Far Enemy" - Great Satan.

Waves of American aircraft—identified by Yemeni officials as drones—targeted militants in vehicles, while Yemeni commandos poured from Russian-made helicopters steered by U.S. Special Operations pilots. The government of Yemen said 55 militants were killed, a sizable number that analysts said may also be significant.

What hardly anydobby has noted is - the Counter Terrorism approach - drones alone with a few raids here and there - may not be cutting it

Pic - "To achieve victory in this conflict, we require a comprehensive global counterinsurgency that will address global asymmetric threats. "

Neo Isolationism

The avuncular Great Satan fan with like the most biggest "stache ever - appropriately nom d"guerr"d "La Stache Grande" recently put steel on target (figuratively speaking, natch) about the totally tarded isolationist bent that appears to have bent  cats (many with alledged brains and apparent prestige) into an appeasement type weirdo world where ev thang be all discombobulated 

43 made the differences between isolationism and unilateralism completely clear, contrary to the expectations of critics who feared the former and got the latter. Withdrawing from the ABM Treaty, rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, "unsigning" the Rome Statute (which created the International Criminal Court), scuttling a "verification" protocol for the Biological Weapons Convention, and refusing to negotiate a "small arms and light weapons" agreement violating the Constitution's Second Amendment, and more, appalled the "blame America first" crowd. Of course, what really sent them over the edge was dismantling the Taliban/al-Qaeda regime in Afghanistan, followed by regime change in Iraq without a new Security Council resolution granting humble supplicants from Washington permission.

The global Left feared even worse: not only was America not entering a new isolationism, it had become wildly interventionist and unilateralist. Who would save Europe from these cowboys who, rather than abandoning the rest of the world, were instead too much in it? The answer, of course, was 44, no unilateralist he, and certainly no militarist.

Not all of those questioning the GOP's historical foreign policy and defence stand are isolationists, far from it, and many would emphatically reject the label. Moreover, it is hardly certain that isolationist sentiment will prevail. But it is critical to understand clearly these strands of thought and their relationships, so that national-security GOPers can answer the questions being raised, restore a coherent party platform and thereby thwart the new isolationism.

One strand in the new isolationist GOP thinking is to reject the convenient, strawman view that America is the world's policeman, and that we must be prepared to intervene anywhere, any time in pursuit of abstract ideals of global stability. One variation on this theme is rejecting "democracy promotion", an enthusiasm of neoconservatives, or "humanitarian intervention", the enthusiasm of the Left's "responsibility to protect" proponents. Neoconservatives are at least partially to blame here for expansive, unrealistic theorising and a penchant for intervention seemingly for its own sake.

How much really differentiates them from the "responsibility to protect" doctrine, under which powers otherwise criticised as "imperialist" nonetheless intervene essentially everywhere for humanitarian purposes, especially when they have absolutely no national interests at stake?

Of course, the isolationists' characterisation of traditional conservative foreign policy is erroneous, since it never aspired either to be the global policeman or to elevate "intervention" from an operational technique to a philosophical principle. And importantly, neocons do not dominate Republican thinking any more than isolationists do, despite the media hype. Instead, repelled by what they label indiscriminate interventionism, the new isolationists sound depressingly like Neville Chamberlain. Faced with 3rd Reich's demand to annex Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, Chamberlain said in September 1938: "How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing." Munich followed.

Sometimes, rejecting neocon or liberal interventionist policies is characterised as "war weariness", a political argument that Americans are heartily sick of Iraq and Afghanistan, and that we should bring the troops home and close the door on foreign adventures. Opinion polls tend to support the "war weariness" argument, but miss the point. Americans are intensely practical; they recognise that the demands of daily life require that they delegate enormous responsibility for national security to the president. They expect him to be on the watch for threats to US interests, and to justify the costs of protecting those interests when necessary. This system generally worked well until 43, whose view of America's place in the world is very different from every president since 32, if not before. 44 is entirely comfortable with American decline from a position he and the transatlantic Left think is unfairly privileged.

Another strand in this confusing mélange is that the isolationists see an assertive, often unilateral, US international posture as synonymous with military intervention, although they are obviously quite different. A robust foreign policy is complex and possesses a far wider range of capabilities to assert American influence than military action alone. The Republican isolationists, however, risk conflating all foreign leadership with military force, and rejecting not just force but the strong US political and economic presence necessary to assert and defend key American interests. They join with true national security advocates in rejecting Obama's penchant for multilateralism, so beloved of Europeans of many political persuasions, but confuse the operational morass of the UN system and other international organisations for overseas involvement more generally. Instead of seeing the benefits of proceeding unilaterally where appropriate or with a coalition that shares US objectives, they reject the external involvement itself, once again confusing broad policy with operational and tactical questions.

Also, focusing on particular weapons of war, remotely-piloted aircraft or "drones" being the flavour of the day. Indeed, Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul used a genuine old-fashioned 13-hour filibuster to dramatise his opposition to drone strikes and his broader opposition to what he has repeatedly called America's "aggressive" foreign policy. The Left has long attacked drones because of a thinly veiled sympathy for the targets, who have no effective means of defence against weapons that strike from remote locations without warning. Moreover, in this view, because drones minimise the risk of casualties, they make it less costly for Washington to wage war. That of course is precisely why drones are so attractive to US military planners, and why we should expand and improve their capabilities. And yet Republican isolationists find themselves again imitating their leftist doppelgängers.

So how does America get back on course? Discussions of foreign policy today are filled with labels (neoconservative and liberal interventionist, realist and isolationist) that are at best unsatisfactory and at worst counterproductive. While it is almost impossible to get beyond these pervasive terms, the answer is to do just that, and forge national security policy based not on ideologies about what an ideal world could look like, but one that is, quite simply, pro-American.

In today's circumstances, Great Satan should be seeking, in Edmund Burke's language, not the "delusive geometrical accuracy" of theories from the declinist Left or the isolationist Right, but instead "rational, cool endeavours" in support of our national interests. To refute the new Republican isolationism, we need not a new conceptual framework and new policies, but a reinvigorated assertion of what we already know to be true, but have grown stale and lazy in articulating.

We must reground policy on advancing and defending American interests. By "interests" I mean plain, unvarnished, traditional concepts: protection of American territory and citizens; defence of our economic trade and investments; and alliances based on mutual defence. I do not mean ill-defined, infinitely expandable concepts whereby everything becomes a national security interest: climate change, alternative fuels, humanitarian crises, human rights. Within a proper definition of "interests" there is ample room for debate, but my limited aspiration for now is simply to create the template upon which the debate should take place. Much like the doctrine of "originalism" in constitutional law, it is not necessarily dispositive of the substantive outcome in every concrete case. Nonetheless, returning to a "pro-American" interest-based approach would significantly shape the debate in ways which more expansive outlooks ("the living constitution" in the legal analogy) simply do not.

43 and the worst isolationists believe that America's strength (belligerence is probably what they say in private) is a major source of global conflict. Instead, of course, the opposite is true: it is not American strength that is provocative, but American weakness. For precisely that reason, Reagan adhered to "peace through strength", the notion that preventing war is best achieved by deterring and dissuading aggressors. Indeed, a more powerful America, and its alliances like Nato, are forces for international peace and security, which facilitate international trade and finance, and undergird American (and global) prosperity.

Without a strong American presence internationally, what little order and stability that do exist could well disappear, to be replaced either with spreading anarchy or with a void to be filled by other powers which have neither our best interests at heart nor will be anything near as benign. Of course, there are many free riders on America's order, but that argues for making them bear their fair share, not abandoning the entire enterprise. We are doing this not for them but for ourselves, and if we stop doing it the consequences will be incalculable. Indeed, the potential risk of a receding Great Satan is breathtaking, but the necessary corrective actions in policy terms are actually quite straightforward. The difficulty, after 43 leaves office, lies in the depth of the hole we will have to dig ourselves out of, how many opportunities we will have missed along the way, and the greater costs involved in trying to make up for lost time.

But there is no point in succumbing to hopelessness. While it is exasperating to have to make the case for a robust American presence in the world, just over a decade since the 9/11 attacks should have yet again seared it into our consciences, we should not be discouraged. Sharpening our wits against the new isolationist challenge will bolster the articulation of our case against 44's declinism, and the global Left more generally. We are not at the point of writing our own Recessional.

Neither 40 nor Thatcher ever thought of such a thing, and neither should we.

Pic - "Never Surrender!"

Independence WoW!

The Council has spoken, the verdict is in and the results for this week are carved eternally in the records of cyberspace.

Council Winners

• First place with 2 2/3 votes! The Noisy Room-The Fascist Stealth of Agenda 21
• Second place with 2 votes – The Razor -The New Misogyny: The Left’s Sexist Treatment of Conservative Women
• Third place with 1 2/3 votes – Joshuapundit-‘Divorcing’ From Israel
• Fourth place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Bookworm Room-Sliding down the slippery slope on abortion
• Fourth place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Rhymes With Right-On The Pulitzer Prize Winning Illegal Alien
• Fourth place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Right Truth -Iraq: Grow up, you’ll be on your own soon.
• Fourth place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – VA Right!-Virginia Public Schools Using SOL’s to Indoctrinate Children in Islamic Theology and Purge Christianity – Part I
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Drones Alone
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Glittering Eye – The Guilds
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – New Zeal – Key Socialist Fears “White Working Class” Could Defeat Obama
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Simply Jews – Z-ranha first time in action: sabotages Gaza flotilla ship

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 1/3 votes! – Right, Wing Nut- Sarah Palin Loves The Jews More Than The Jews Love Themselves submitted by Right Truth
• Second place with 2 votes – The Contentious Centerist – Peace Flotillas to kick peace in the groin submitted by Simply Jews
• Third place *t* with 1 2/3 votes -Patterico’s Pontifications/Aaron Worthing – Thirteen Clear Factual Errors in Richard Stengel’s Essay on the Constitution (And I Am Looking for Your Help) (Update: My Letter to the Editor) submitted by Bookworm Room
• Fourth place *t* with 1 1/3 vote - Caroline Glick – The Invisible Palestinians submitted by Joshuapundit
• Fourth place *t* with 1 1/3 vote -Via Meadia – The Failure of Al Gore: Part One submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Fifth place *t* with 1 vote - Doug Ross – The Obama 2012 Campaign: Nothing says ‘I feel your pain’ like $36,000-a-plate fundraisers with Wall Street executives submitted by The Razor
• Fifth place *t* with 1 vote -Once Upon A Time In The West – Cyber-Leninism File: State-sponsored hackers attack IMF computers submitted by New Zeal
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Victor Davis Hanson – There Are No Socialists submitted by The Noisy Room
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Big Jolly Politics – One Voter’s Checklist for Candidates for the New CD 36 submitted by Rhymes With Right
• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote -al-Jazeera – Criminalising Palestinian solidarity submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote -Neo Neocon – More On The American Family’s Decline submitted by The Political Commentator
• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote -American Thinker/Stuart Kaufman – My Weekend In The Belly Of The Beast submitted by The Watcher

See you next week! And have A Wonderful Fourth of July!

A Slow Drone To China

Changkong!

When the largest collectivist nation state in world history touch'd off a tease with debutante ing Chengdu J 20 Black Eagle, alarmists instinctively set off the alarm

"...For alarmists, the Pacific balance of power seemed to shift in an instant. Armed with hundreds of fast, elusive J-20s in coming years, the PLAAF could dominate the South China Sea, reaffirming China’s rise as a global puissance and elbowing aside less audacious, tech-savvy rivals."

As psychically proven in "Shi Ling!"

"...Concerns of avionics, weaponry and even stealth capabilities about China’s wunder waffe may also be taken in tandem with production abilities – not unlike Commonwealth Russia’s ability to unveil prototype after prototype of hot stuff that is fun to look at, yet  – alas -  with zero mass manufacturing ability to produce enough goodies to shift – let alone somersault – any power projection balances."

PACRIM: Drones Gone Wild! is a great example of this  

When Great Satan deployed to Guam a menage a troi of RQ-4B Global Hawkettes to sweetly keep a non stop eye on vast wastes of trackless oceans, tender, sensitive spots in China's inner inlands and Chinese naval chicanery - this hap hap happy event denoted a true strategic shift!

"...In a world where knowledge equals power, the RQ-4 is among the most powerful aircraft ever. And for all its success in producing the J-20 prototype, China appears to have nothing to rival the RQ-4. While Beijing might be closing the gap with Washington as far as loud, visually impressive manned fighter jets are concerned, in the quieter, more subtle and arguably more important world of unmanned aircraft, China is far behind—and possibly losing ground. 

 As Captain Burke via Dr Michael H shared in "Shi Ling!" - development and deployment of hot! weaponry l'futur requires massive investments in logistics, booklearning, manufacturing, quality control and collectivist kryptonite: Unbridled free inquiry bay bee - totally queers the mix on despotic innovations.

 "...Building on a century of aerospace innovation, and with tens of billions of dollars in developmental funding over at least two decades, plus the urgency instilled by several ongoing wars, the US military has become by far the world leader in unmanned aircraft. Today, the Pentagon possesses some 3000 UAVs, ranging in size from the hand-thrown Raven to the Cessna-size Predator and Reaper (both built by General Atomics),and the much larger Global Hawk.

And unmanned drones are anything but unmanned - requiring attendants that can number up to 170 experts each to maintain 

"...Today, the US military has tens of thousands of personnel assigned to drone units, many of them with years of combat experience. It’s safe to say that China in contrast hasn’t developed similar human resources. All this means that even if the PLAAF developed and bought, overnight, hundreds of modern aerial drones technologically equal to their US counterparts, it still wouldn’t be able to match the US unmanned air force.

Oh snap! The funintended consequence is that China will enjoy little else except to continue to act out PR wise with a plethora of aerospace aesthetics like J20's grainy pic party.

Meanwhile Great Satan's "...Global Hawks and other unmanned aircraft will do the understated hard work of actually altering the Pacific balance of power"— in favour of Great Satan.

Pic - "My Kisses are as wicked as an F16"

The Policy For Drones Gone Wild!

The administration released a redacted version of its 2013 policy guidance that spells out the interagency review process for determining whether a suspected terrorist should be targeted in an overseas drone strike.

The guidance described a process for directing a strike against a “high value target” only if there was “near-certainty” of the target’s identity and no civilians would be killed. It said capturing the individual was the preferred policy. The document was turned over to the American Civil Liberties Union after the group sued under the Freedom of Information Act.

“Lethal action should not be proposed or pursued as a punitive step or as a substitute for prosecuting a terrorist suspect in a civilian court or a military commission,” according to the policy.

The ACLU said in a statement that questions remain about where the guidance applies, “whether the president has waived its requirements in particular instances,” and how its “relatively stringent standards can be reconciled with the accounts of eyewitnesses, journalists, and human rights researches who have documented large numbers of bystander casualties.”

The document was turned over Friday to the ACLU, which released it publicly on Saturday.
Human-rights groups have questioned whether the U.S. tries hard enough to capture terrorists, rather than killing them, in part because of the dilemma of what to do with prisoners. The policy says that those captured should be placed in the custody of other nations when possible or face U.S. prosecution “in a civilian court or, where available, a military commission.”

Guantanamo Bay

“In no event will additional detainees be brought to the detention facilities at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base,” it says. 44 has tried to close the prison in Cuba throughout his two terms in office, only to be stymied by Congress.

Between 64 and 116 civilians were killed in 473 U.S. strikes outside Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria between the beginning of Obama’s presidency in 2009 and the end of 2015, the government said last month in its first accounting of non-combat deaths. The strikes killed as many as 2,581 combatants, the White House said. The figures include casualties from strikes by drones and by manned aircraft, but not those inflicted by U.S. personnel on the ground.

 Critics called the civilian casualty figures unrealistically low. The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that between 380 and 801 civilians were killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya during the period covered by the report. The Long War Journal, a project of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, estimates 207 civilian deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen alone during the period covered by the White House’s report.

For a report on non-combatant deaths, click here.

National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said Saturday in a statement that the memo’s standards “offer protections for civilians that exceed the requirements of the law of armed conflict.”

The guidance “provides that, in general, the United States will use lethal force outside areas of active hostilities against a lawful target that poses a ‘continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons,’” Price said.

The May 2013 Presidential Policy Guidance, once known as the “playbook,” spells out an interagency review process that would be triggered after the Defense Department or intelligence agencies nominated targets in instances where capture wasn’t feasible or where the target was determined to be an imminent threat.

A Pentagon request would be reviewed by the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then a counterterrorism advisory group that included the department’s general counsel.

Operation Odyssey Lightning

Libya - the gift that keeps on giving...

 The Pentagon’s war in Libya appears to be escalating with a surge in reported strikes. And the U.S. Marine Corps — which has played an outsized role in the war — may no longer be alone in attacking the Islamic State faction in and around the eastern city of Sirte.

 On Oct. 2, U.S. forces conducted 20 different missions and blew up more than six dozen individual targets, according to an official press release from the Pentagon’s main command for operations in Africa. By that point, American pilots had conducted more than 200 air strikes since the campaign began on Aug. 1. 

Marine aviators based aboard Wasp have blasted the Islamic State in Libya since the beginning of the mission, dubbed Odyssey Lightning. Though the Air Force’s drones were involved in the strikes early on, the Pentagon’s released information almost solely concerns the leathernecks’ operations.

However, it is highly unlikely that the Marines could have flown all of the Oct. 2 missions by themselves. 

Publicly available photographs from Odyssey Lightning show AV-8B Harrier jump jets carrying only two bombs on each sortie. Pictures similarly show AH-1W Cobra gunship helicopters heading toward the Sirte area armed with only two missiles.

A typical Marine Expeditionary Unit, such as the one aboard Wasp, has six AV-8s and four AH-1s. Assuming each carried two weapons at a time and the crews only needed one bomb or missile to destroy each target, these jets and choppers would have each needed to fly nearly four individual missions on Oct. 2.

And on Oct. 3, American pilots hit more than two dozen new targets. Again, the Marines would have had to put each of their aircraft in the air at least once to meet that demand.

As of Sept. 15, the destroyer USS Carney escorting Wasp had not contributed directly to the strikes, according to an email from the U.S. Africa Command public affairs office. It is more likely that Air Force fighter-bombers and drones, flying from bases in Europe, helped out on at least some of these missions.

 Flying from the United Kingdom, the flying branch’s F-15E Strike Eagles make regular trips to Africa and the Middle East. The Pentagon declined to confirm or deny whether F-15s participated in the recent Libya strikes. 

Back in Libya, the Pentagon has adopted a similarly obtuse method of grouping strikes regardless of the total number of targets American aviators attack.

This means the official tally of strikes for two separate days might be the same even if the attacks on one day destroyed exponentially more Islamic State vehicles, facilities or nebulous “fighting positions.”

And upon closer inspection of the reports, it seems clear that Washington is stepping up air strikes in Libya and committing more American troops to the mission.

Unhook Up

 

Crazier than a stripper marrying a preacher - the Great Satan Pakistan Hook Up is fixing to get all unhooked

Like an incompatible couple who can’t help bickering when together while well aware that divorce is not an option. The awkward joint appearance of 44 and the Pakistani Prime Minister for a press briefing after their White House meeting on 23 October, when they declined to take questions from reporters, aptly summed up the troubled relationship. This dysfunctional kinship, however, is moving towards a climax as Great Satan withdraws forces and equipment from Afghanistan primarily through Land of the Pure

The bottom line is that the glue holding the two countries together consists of more negative than positive elements. Great Satan  needs Land of the Pure in its ongoing war on terrorism – a desperate necessity at least until the withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan. And cash-strapped Pakistan is humiliatingly dependent on handouts from Great Satan  and US-sanctioned International Monetary Fund loans.

A 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center shows that only 11 percent of Pakistanis have a favorable view of America. An earlier survey by the Pew Center and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace revealed that only 10 percent of Americans have a great or fair amount of trust in Pakistan.

It also showed that 97 percent of Pakistanis familiar with US drone strikes held a negative view of them. “Those who are familiar with the drone campaign also overwhelmingly (94%) believe the attacks kill too many innocent people,” stated the report. “Nearly three-quarters (74%) say they are not necessary to defend Pakistan from extremist organizations.”

In stark contrast, a survey by the Washington Post-ABC News in February 2012 found that 83 percent of Americans supported Washington’s drone attacks.

Reflecting popular opinion, Sharif, appearing next to 44, said “The use of drones is not only a violation of our territorial integrity but they are also detrimental to our efforts to eliminate terrorism from our country.” His government was committed to bringing them to an end, he added.

44 left Sharif’s words – delivered at the brief briefing in a tone so soft that reporters strained to hear him – stand alone, and refrained from making any related statement of his own. Strikingly, the word "drone" was missing in their 2,500-word joint statement. By contrast, the term “terrorism” appeared 13 times and “nuclear” 10 times – not in the context of parity with the US-India civil nuclear agreement that Sharif wanted, but in the context of “nuclear terrorism.”

Leaked intell dangingly LOLs that contrary to vociferous denunciations of drone strikes for years, Pakistan’s government had clandestinely endorsed the campaign and received classified briefings on the attacks and casualty counts.

In the Pentagon’s drawdown plans in Afghanistan, to be completed by December 2014, Pakistan looms large. It is required to remove or transport at least 1.4 million pieces of equipment, ranging from small arms to massive wheeled and tracked vehicles. Pakistan provides the cheapest and quickest land routes for this purpose. On its part, Pakistan gains financially by charging transit fees while its private transport companies benefit from an estimated budget of up to $7 billion earmarked by the Pentagon for the pullout.

While the patchwork of compromise keeps Pakistan afloat and US drones hovering over the tribal badlands along the Afghan-Pakistan border, a denouement is expected in 2014, starting with the Afghan presidential poll in April and ending with the US pullout deadline of December. The US-Pakistani marriage may become even more fractious next year, testing its very survival

Pic - "Our relationship with Pakistan could not be more important"

Decline And Fall Of Pakistan

Great Satan got claws! 

Delivering a Drones Gone Wild demarche'  and killing ISI's Haq fanboys by the metric tonne on Good Friday no less may mark the beginning of the end for Pakistan.

"...First, Islamabad is said to covet Afghanistan for “strategic depth.” Pakistan is geographically narrow and its major cities, positioned as they are near its eastern border with India, are vulnerable to attack in the event of a war with its rival. Thus, Pakistan’s military planners - for whom an Indian invasion is always imminent - yearn for the rugged Afghan terrain to the west, where a retreating army could regroup and coordinate a guerrilla war, if necessary.

"...Second, Pakistan is fearful of Indian influence in Afghanistan. Around every corner in Kabul, Pakistanis see Indian agents and behind every Afghan initiative, a nefarious Hindu plot. That India’s presence in Afghanistan has been benign, civilian and economic in nature has not stopped the ISI from backing brazen jihadi attacks on the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

"...This suggests that Pakistan’s perceived interests in Afghanistan are India-centric. However, the fear of ethnic (specifically Pashtun and Baluch) nationalism may play an even greater role in Pakistan’s strategy, penetrating to the heart of what constitutes Pakistani identity and the integrity of the Pakistani state.

"...There are roughly 40 million Pashtuns straddling the Afghan-Pakistan border, the notoriously autonomous “martial race,” with legendary fighting prowess (virtually all Taliban are Pashtun, but not all Pashtun are Taliban). The Af-Pak border that cuts this stateless nation in half was drawn by India’s colonial British overlords in 1893. Incorporating a sliver of the Afghan frontier into northwestern India, the Durand Line, as the border is called, was designed to create a buffer zone between India and the lawless hinterland beyond. But after partition in 1947, the new (West) Pakistani state inherited these Pashtun tribal areas.

"...Like their countrymen in the east, the Pashtuns - and the even more disaffected Baluch minority in the south - are Muslim, but they share little else in common in terms of culture, language, allegiance or history. So it comes as no surprise that they have periodically agitated for greater autonomy, independence or even incorporation into Afghanistan. As the saying goes, the Afghans have a terribly weak state but a cohesive national identity. In Pakistan, the strong, military-run state is in part compensation for its fragile national identity.

"...Consequently, Islamabad is hypersensitive to ethnic nationalism and separatism. Pakistan already lost nearly half its territory - East Pakistan - to another disgruntled ethnic minority in the 1971 war that created Bangladesh. To complicate matters further, successive Afghan governments, including the Pakistani-backed Taliban regime of the 1990s, have refused to recognize the Durand Line. 

"...Pakistan fears that a strong and independent Afghanistan - let alone one allied to India - could challenge their artificial border and agitate Pashtun or Baluch nationalists, undermining Pakistan from within. A friendly, Taliban-led regime in Kabul is thus seen by Islamabad as the best defense against this possibility and against Indian “encirclement.”

Why not advocate dissolving Pakistan as a nation state? Keep your friends close and your enemy closer perhaps. 

"...Have the international community declare that parts of Pakistan have become ungovernable and a menace to international security.

Great Satan's only client new clear Army with a fake believe nation/state attached blinging the fastest sprouting new clear arsenal on the planet  is certainly aware another terrorist attack in America by anyone who has ever been within drone range of North Waziristan will have terrible consequences for Land of the Pure

"...Ten years of supporting America’s Islamist enemies has poisoned its reputation in America. Its once-mighty defenders in Washington are isolated and shrinking in number, while a younger generation of policymakers knows nothing of Pakistan but militancy, corruption and deception. 

"...When the United States inevitably departs Afghanistan, so too, will Pakistan’s “leverage” over America. Only then will Pakistan’s leadership realize the true cost of their double game.  

 Pic - "If the attack were carried out by members of one of the groups linked to the Pakistani military, such a response could be on a scale that would lead to the collapse of the Pakistani state.

Half Asset

44's new subtle approach to friends, frenemies and enemies is still in it's infancy - way too early to offer a final grade.

"The first days -- literally -- of the administration were defined by sweeping pledges to end torture, close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, and revise the U.S. approach to terrorism detentions. But that early promise is over."

"Still, if there is an example of how "engagement based on mutual interests and mutual respect" has succeeded beyond anyone's expectations, it's Pakistan. For years, intelligence professionals and military officers warned that the Afghanistan War could not be successfully concluded while the Pakistani government allowed the Afghan Taliban leadership to operate from its territory, providing resources, guerrillas, and strategic direction for its forces across the border.

"And for just as long, the Bush administration issued directives to the Pakistani military that the Pakistanis promptly ignored. Once Obama came into office, his national-security team absorbed Pakistani complaints that U.S. policy was limited merely to terrorism. Obama opened the aperture, pushing Congress to pass a $7.5 billion, five-year aid package for Pakistani governance and civil society, along with a new military aid package for counterinsurgency support.

"The administration stopped publicly criticizing Pakistani lassitude on counterterrorism and gave it two major pieces of additional support: CIA drones began targeting the leaders of Pakistan's own Taliban, who had killed and terrorized hundreds of Pakistanis, and pressed India to return to diplomatic dialogue.

Actually - that's about as good as it gets for 44's 18 month review - the rest is - to use an ancient corrupted Hillbilly Phrase - Half Asset.

Like the Syrian Suck Up Shiz:

"Engagement in and of itself is not a worthless strategy. The key to engagement is deploying it effectively, using leverage, and making clear to the adversary you are negotiating with that in addition to backchannel messages and high-level diplomatic visits, you have sticks at your disposal as well. This, however, is not the Obama style, at least when it comes to foreign policy."

And that may explain Rocket Rich Gay Free Persia's Preacher Command's Hand Picked Pres - the fiery little Revo Guarder and his recent appreciation for 44's FoPo skill set:

"American materialist politicians, whenever they are beaten by logic, immediately resort to their weapons like cowboys

"Mr. Obama, you are a newcomer (to politics). Wait until your sweat dries and get some experience. Be careful not to read just any paper put in front of you or repeat any statement recommended"

"Mr. Obama is under the pressure of capitalists and the Zionists. American officials bigger than you, more bullying than you, couldn't do a damn thing, let alone you.

Pic "Using all our assets" with Lindsay

Syrian Strike

At great risk of getting totally Syrialicious the afore and previously previewed twerking about tact tact tactical delights is indeed upon us!

Great Satan (and Allied) Air Power in and around Suriya al Kubra are quite significant 

In the event the U.S. intervenes in Syria, the opening shots will likely begin with cruise missile bombardments from the sea. But the U.S. has also prepared for a longer conflict, moving fighter aircraft into range by basing them in nearby Jordan. If called upon, they could support intercontinental bombers traveling thousands of miles to drop precision-guided munitions onto Assad’s forces.

Any war with Syria would have an entirely different set of physical constraints — surely being discussed over the next several days as Gen. Martin Dempsey meets in Jordan with generals from 10 nations; just as Assad’s forces attempt to shift the blame for the worst chemical attacks since the 1988 Halabja massacre.

Syria’s population centers and Assad’s military forces are deep inside the country’s interior, unlike Libya

Largely, the Jordanian build-up was carried out under the auspices of the annual Eager Lion war games, which concluded in late June out of the sprawling Mafraq Air Base east of Amman.

Over two weeks, Jordanian and U.S. forces conducted combined-arms exercises — with thousands of ground troops participating from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit and the Army’s 1st Armored Division — backed up by M-1 tanks and AH-1 attack helicopters. Meanwhile, fighter aircraft practiced air-to-air combat and trained how to respond in case Syrian fighter pilots attempt to defect.

 

Among these include a squadron of F-16 fighters (a squadron normally comprises between 18 and 24 birds), which are capable of both intercepting Syrian fighters and dropping laser-guided smart bombs and air-to-ground missiles. A Patriot missile battery has been deployed to Jordan

 

Around 1,000 U.S. troops have also remained in the country, forming an advance operations and logistics lilypad in the event of a prolonged air campaign over Syria — waiting to organize and plan for a sudden build-up of strike aircraft and drones

 

 

Another option is basing aircraft at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, which is a short hop away from the Syrian border. The U.S. would also be able to call on six short-range Harrier jump jets aboard the USS Kearsarge, which is believed to be sailing around the Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba
Turkey has several reasons for supporting tougher action against Syria. The war has forced a surge of refugees across the border into Turkey. Ankara also would like to see Iranian influence curtailed, of which an Assad defeat would be a major blow.

44 might not be willing to push an action in Syria to the point of cruise missile strikes from the sea, let alone escalate to an aerial campaign across the Jordanian border and with bombers launched from South Dakota. But even America’s most limited interventions have a nasty habit of turning into protracted wars.

Pic - “Air power is an unusually seductive form of military strength, in part because, like modern courtship, it appears to offer gratification without commitment"