Quote:
Originally Posted by August
Well if by hard targets you mean their armor and artillery then it will have gone a long way to reducing their combat effectiveness.
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This, but also troops amassed on the ground, allowing anti-personnel cluster bombing of any kind. IS already has adapted to the thread from air by the typicla means of asymmetraicla warfare tactis: melting into the civilian infrastructure and population, avoiding exposure to the open blue sky where possible, avoiding huge gatherings of fighters on the ground, no vehicle columns.
Its the same problem for the Air Force as what the Israelis faced in their past two wars in Gaza and Lebanon: they ran out of targets. And that reduced the importance of their superior air force as well. And then you have to make a decision: either to go in with boots on the ground, or not.
The alternative would be what Assad is doing: dropping barrel bombs on civilian city districts without discriminating between civilian residents and fighters. That is brutal, but this shows one thing about Assad: that he intends to win, no compromise accepted. The American/Western approach now, on the other hand, may be showing a civilised attitude, a temper moderated by reason and morals. But it is so in different and indetermined that I cannot see it achieving what Obama claims he wants to achieve.
Wait -
has there even been clear despriptions of war objectives given so far, have they even described the criteria by which the war's objectives will be seen as achieved and the whole thing seen as a victory so that one will disengage again fro further military engagement? Or was it just blind activism that made them headjump into the pool once again without checking first whether there is water in it or not?