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A New Perspective on Cost of War
On 2/21/2012 6:18 AM, Robert Green wrote:
"The Daring wrote in message ... stuff snipped Ever heard of friend or foe identification. I do believe the majority of modern aircraft have radar transponders. If a fighter aircraft of another country was approaching a warship, the prudent thing to do is to make contact with that aircraft to warn them off. You do realize there's almost no time to warn approaching jet aircraft in a war zone? This was just a tragic error. Americans have been somehow convinced wars can be fought with surgical precision and no unintended consequences. As long as they involve the use of high explosives, wars will generate collateral damage. Modern naval defense doctrine pretty much *demands* any unidentified aircraft be "missile locked" immediately when its course is on intercept in a war zone. That one target could launch multiple air-to-ship weapons at any time as its approaching and suddenly a single threat becomes five. Operating guided missile frigates in areas where civilian aircraft are flying is very, very risk business. Back then, we did not have the capability to account for every piloted aircraft in the sky with near 100% precision. Back then, we had far fewer satellites and target acquisition systems operating. Unless we got hit with some huge EMP, I don't see us shooting down a passenger jet again any time soon. Our capabilities regarding tracking passenger planes has, as you might guess, improved quite dramatically since 9/11 when we realized that we might even have to shoot down one of our own passenger jets. As for the Iranian Airbus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 Three years after the incident, Admiral William J. Crowe admitted on American television show Nightline that the Vincennes was inside Iranian territorial waters when it launched the missiles. This contradicted earlier Navy statements that were misleading if not incorrect. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) report of December, 1988 placed the USS Vincennes well inside Iran's territorial waters. The airliner was transmitting a friend-or-foe identification code for a civilian aircraft and maintained English-speaking radio contact with civil flight control. In 1996, the United States and Iran reached "an agreement in full and final settlement of all disputes, differences, claims, counterclaims" relating to the incident at the International Court of Justice. As part of the settlement, the United States agreed to pay US$61.8 million, an average of $213,103.45 per passenger, in compensation to the families of the Iranian victims. However, the United States has never admitted responsibility, nor apologized to Iran. There are so many unclear facts, disputed allegations and top secrets involved in the shootdown that we may never know what really went on. If you recall, the Sovs blasted flight KAL007 out of the sky with a US Congressman aboard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_...nes_Flight_007 I don't think our side ever dreamed that the Sovs would respond to an overflight with a shoot down. That flight was probably a test of Russian missile defense systems and their ability to discriminate between passenger and military aircraft. Too many very weird happened that night for it to have been an accident. The Congressman was there in all probability, to secure quick release of the passengers if they were *forced* down. Instead, the Sovs *shot* them down. We didn't understand the human factors of the equation. That Sov pilot would have been executed soon after landing had he done anything but shoot the KAL passenger jet down. KAL007 was another sad intelligence failure but one we learned from, I think. We're getting better and better at trying to understand the mindsets of our enemy. We had great trouble, at first, understanding how the Japanese could send kamikaze planes at us. Our military leaders actually took quite a while to understand what was happening and to failed to develop meaningful defenses against them for quite some time. The first kamikaze attacks occurred in 1944 but in April of 1945 the US Navy was still being savaged off Okinawa by hundreds of kamikaze attacks. We culturally did not understand why they would deliberately destroy reusable planes (mostly) and trained pilots. A noble death by suicide in service to your Emperor was not, as they say, "in our instruction set." Ironically, those attacks turned out to be one of the underpinnings of the shoot 'em as soon as you see 'em rules - the further away they were from the ships when shot down, the less likely they were to steer even a crippled plane into a flat top. Did we learn everything we should have? Probably not. The WTC was essentially a kamikaze attack. Half a century after we first saw the technique we still got clobbered by it. There is a distinct possibility that the Islamofascist government of Iran purposely installed the radar transponder of a fighter jet into a civilian airliner in order to sacrifice their own citizens to make themselves out to be victims of The Great Satin. The Great Satin? (-: Sounds very much like the KAL007 shootdown. Fly a commercial jet in a restricted area and very bad things can happen like it did to us and them. It's what governments and spooks do. I believe the policy of "The ends justify the means." was invented centuries ago by Muslims long before there were Communists or Democrats. ^_^ Arabs aren't particularly good soldiers http://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars At least not those of the past 50 years. They were probably fooling around with the lives of civilian passengers just like we did with KAL007. It's nothing new. Remember the Lusitania? Passengers ship carrying munitions. Governments fooling around with the lives of civilian passengers. The Wiki site has a prescient warning from 100 years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Lus...xclusion_zones Neutral vessels also will run a risk in the War Zone, because in view of the hazards of sea warfare . . . it may not always be possible to prevent attacks on enemy ships from harming neutral ships. Hell, those damn nasty Brits used to tied Boer prisoners to their locomotives to discourage the Boers from blowing up British trains. All of these events pale when compared to the Russians sinking the German refugee ship the Wilhelm Gustloff, drowning almost 10,000 people and dwarfing the Titanic's sinking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Wilhelm_Gustloff It should be pointed out that the ship was loaded with military and Nazi officials as well as refugees fleeing the terrible vengeance of the approaching Red Army, eager to avenge the pillaging of Russia early in the war. -- Bobby G. Darn it Bobby, I'm poking Harry with a sharp stick, don't interfere! ^_^ TDD |
#2
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A New Perspective on Cost of War
Hell, those damn nasty Brits used to tied Boer prisoners to their
locomotives to discourage the Boers from blowing up British trains. *All of these events pale when compared to the Russians sinking the German refugee ship the Wilhelm Gustloff, drowning almost 10,000 people and dwarfing the Titanic's sinking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Wilhelm_Gustloff It should be pointed out that the ship was loaded with military and Nazi officials as well as refugees fleeing the terrible vengeance of the approaching Red Army, eager to avenge the pillaging of Russia early in the war. -- Bobby G. Darn it Bobby, I'm poking Harry with a sharp stick, don't interfere! ^_^ I know that. Ain't it great? |
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