A historical first - German Tornados now stationed in Afghanistan

[Skybird]

After a three-day travel and two refueling stops, 6+2 German Tornados have arrived in Afghanistan. Like all the weeks before I am still wondering of what kind of use they can be. the real intention, imo, has not much to do with recce that is of worth for ground troops - the Tornados do not have live-time links for their high-definitioon cameras, only the infrared-camera with very low resultion has a certain live-feeding capacity.Public support for the mission is ridiculously thin over here: 4%.

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/cgi-bin/client/modele.pl?session=dae.25308841.1175635652.AXrVrn8A AAEAAFHifPgAAAAU&manuel_call_cat=3&manuel_call_prod=80920&manuel_call_mod=release&modele=jdc_inter

Worth to mention: the germans do not have any rescue capacity by themselves for shot-down pilots, and the political parties in Berlin do not have even an idea of what exit strategy there ever could be. It's all depending on hopes, and gambles.

What a superior planning.

[Letum]

What are they there to do exactly?
What are they needed for?

[gnirtS]

Probably like most of the rest of the force. Its there to be seen.

Probably little or no tactical use given the ground situation other than the occasional compound bombing.

[Skybird]

What are they there to do exactly?
What are they needed for?

Well, that is a VERY good question.

German politicians are unable to answer it (they just mumble senseless phrases instead and even do reject that they are operating in a combat area), and the German military is close to revolting against this BS.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=107668

Read my "analysis" part.

The German variant of the recce Tornado is unique and is not operated neither by Italy nor Britain, and it has extremely good HD cameras indeed. But no live link from the HD cameras to ground stations. It will take one, two, three hours or more until the planes flew back and have landed and the images got processed and info is given to the ground forces. Until then, any group of enemy fighters they have photographed will have vanished since long.

The whole operation is SYMBOLIC only. I love high risk operations or expensive actions - for symbolic value only. I also would love to see political leaders lining up with the first attack wave of combat troops.

In my opinion it is a foul compromise to give ground concerning demands for Germans "needing to learn again how to kill" (Canadians, Americans, British in autumn 2006). The Tornados are being sent to prepare the German people for sending active battle troops to Afghanistan and commence combat actions some time in the future.

Or because politicians believe all that crap themselves that they are telling.

[gnirtS]

Tornado ECRs really designed for low level, high threat area recon runs.

Seems rather pointless to have them in a generally low air threat area where a multitude of UAVs can perform the job for longer, cheaper and less risk.

Especially given the equipment to utilise its full potential isnt there either.