So the RAF have been flying sorties for 4 days now and have now managed to find some targets worth attacking, a pick up truck and a gun emplacement. Now i fully believe those who say that we will not defeat IS by air power alone but surely at this rate we will bankrupt the country before we even degrade their capability even a little.

I have a military background and from my experience i would have thought that the military planners and the intelligence bods would have had a list of targets ready to go for when/if parliament authorised the air strikes, it almost seeems like the good men and women of the RAF are just being sent to fly around in circles above the desert to look for targets of oppurtunity, just to show political willing and a tough line.

Whilst i support the need to do something about IS, i’m starting to think that those in power really don’t have a start point, let alone an end game. Thoughts?

Former SAS chappie on Radio 4 this morning said we need troops on the ground to support the unskilled and scared Iraqi army.

Yep, boots on the ground is the only way to defeat IS militarily.

However, this would be a high risk operation with masses of scope for both allied Military casualties and Iraqi/Syrian civilians being used as human shields by IS.

It isn’t hard to see why no Western Government wants to commit to it…
Personally I think some Arab countries with skilled and well kitted out ground troops should be getting involved…

Didn’t the Iraqie army run off leaving all the arms/weapons/tanks etc thereby leaving them ripe for IS to take?

Seems like they need more than support to me.

What is the Chinese/Russian angle on this? Do they feel as threatened by the enemy “practically knocking on our door” or not really care?
I assume they have journalists in country are they at risk of being kidnapped?

I have a military background

Surely you must understand then how much propaganda value is gained by the enemy when innocent civilians are killed by ‘the evil western oppressors’

Surely you must understand then how much propaganda value is gained by the enemy when innocent civilians are killed by ‘the evil western oppressors’

Of course, i wasn’t suggesting that the RAF should bomb the crap out of anything that moves just because they’ve got a green light to carry out ops, more that we have been led to believe by the media/government that northern Iraq is over run by IS, yet the people in theatre are struggling to find any targets worthy of engagement, and that those few targets that have been destroyed would have come at the cost of £millions.

and that those few targets that have been destroyed would have come at the cost of £millions.

Yes I see your point now. It’s an extremely expensive way of destroying a Toyota HiLux with a machine gun on it. Bloody politicians are clueless.

Why don’t we leave it to the Saudis, they’ve way more planes than us and they’re closer.

Also, they behead a couple of people a week so they should understand the enemy a bit better.

I agree, you would have thought they’d have identified training camps, convoys etc. Maybe satellites and drones aren’t as ‘all seeing’ as we thought!

Maybe because the Saudis are bankrolling IS and might miss on purpose?

Seriously, good point that. Those Gulf states have all the latest kit. Maybe they can’t train slaves to fly jets like they can to do everything else.

I for one admire the consistency of our politicians.

We bungled in there first time without a ****ing clue what we were actually trying to achieve, based on a frankly laughable mandate, with hopeless ‘intelligence’ and without a ****ing clue what to do when we got there, or what might actually happen when we did, alongside some very, very dubious ‘allies’.

Sound familiar?

“Those who do not know history’s mistakes are doomed to repeat them”

George Santayana

Tony had his war. Maggie had one too. Dave wants his!

It is Wednesday today, so the start of the weekend for the RAF, so there won’t be any more sorties until next Tuesday. 😉

Its pathetic really.

Possibly the finest IDS aircraft ever made reduced to bombing a ratty old Toyota Hilux.

And it all misses the point.

There is a reason that me and a bunch of mates can’t declare North Lanarkshire a “Mountain Biking Caliphate” and run around beheading roadies infidels. That reason is Law and Order. Law and Order doesn’t arise spontaneously its a product of a stable government.

You can drop as many bombs as you like if you don’t address the underlying issue of lack of functioning government then your **** before you have even started.

Total cost of all these Tornado sorties so far = 700 squillion pounds
Price of a battered Toyota HiLux with a couple of kalashnikovs on board = considerably less than 700 squillion pounds.

Did everyone enjoy Mr Osbournes announcements of the latest massive cuts to our ‘unaffordable’ public services yesterday?

Total cost of all these Tornado sorties so far = 700 squillion pounds

Don’t worry these were humanitarian bombs. So it’s not defense spending it’s foreign aid.

I reckon next series of Top Gear will do a bit on a HiLux getting hit by a Brimstone and still being able to start afterwards.

led to believe by the media/government that northern Iraq is over run by IS, yet the people in theatre are struggling to find any targets worthy of engagement, and that those few targets that have been destroyed would have come at the cost of £millions.

I don’t think anybody thinks they have sort of super bunker/base worth bombing. Problem is, there are probably a lot of people driving round the desert in pickups. You’ve go to work out which ones are the enemy and which ones are just going shopping?

This is one of the problems with using hi-tech, incredibly expensive weapons to fight very lo-tech enemies.

I remember reading an Apache pilot memoir from Afgan where he describes shooting up an old american car with his 30mm cannon and then using a Hellfire missile just to make sure! I’m pretty sure the cannon would of totally wrecked the car.

A Hellfire costs $60k, never mind the cost of operating the Apache.

This is one of reasons the UK and US have spent way more operating in Afghan than the USSR did in the 80’s.

jonba – Member
Problem is, there are probably a lot of people driving round the desert in pickups. You’ve go to work out which ones are the enemy and which ones are just going shopping?

Anyone who runs is ISIS.
Anyone who stands still, is well-disciplined ISIS.

Aren’t ISIS all driving around in nice shiny new Humvees, and tanks that the Iraqi ‘army’ left behind when they ran away?

So surely you just blow up all the Humvees and tanks in Iraq

Oh wait…. hang on a minute….. I think I may have spotted another potential problem with this whole air strikes business

As the US found out in Vietnam, all those years ago, trying to fight a “war” when your enemy’s army IS the population of the country you are bombing is really rather hard……….

( iirc, that particular conflict didn’t end well either. )

RaveyDavey – Member

It’s an extremely expensive way of destroying a Toyota HiLux

I dunno, they are pretty durable.

Its all about O.I.L. and I.S.R.A.E.L.

Funny that the heat is now off Iran now they’ve started to come around to the idea of letting the Saudi’s build that pipeline to Europe, bypassing Putin………..

Brimstone missile: £175k
Tornado Aircraft: £10.9M
Tornado flight cost: £35k/hr
Pilot & Navigator training: £6M
Paveway bomb cost: £22k

Total, not including sundries such as fuel, spares, or support services:

£17,130,000.

Because you’re ISIS are worth it…..

It only costs that much if you fly the plane into the ground after every mission.

Fair point Northwind. But with every Brimstone missile costing £175k, and they used 4 of them on the Hylux, then on those alone, you’d be looking at about £15 – 20 million to take out the car park of your nearest Tesco Express

It only costs that much if you fly the plane into the ground after every mission.

That is how all missions ended for me on F-16 Combat Pilot on my Amstrad. Never could land the bloody thing!

@binners, my local tesco express is just beside an army barracks, ISIS are going to get a nasty surprise if they come between 3 rifles and the crisps

Yes I see your point now. It’s an extremely expensive way of destroying a Toyota HiLux with a machine gun on it. Bloody politicians are clueless.
Expensive compared to what? Sending in our soldiers? You do realize that if we do that, some will come back in body bags. How expensive is that then?

Total cost of all these Tornado sorties so far = 700 squillion pounds
Price of a battered Toyota HiLux with a couple of kalashnikovs on board = considerably less than 700 squillion pounds.

Did everyone enjoy Mr Osbournes announcements of the latest massive cuts to our ‘unaffordable’ public services yesterday?

I hadn’t realized just how hypocrytical Binners can be.
Yeah, what a terrible, rotten old Conservative party, trying to do something about IS and the horrors being committed in Iraq / Syria. The UK taking action as part of a coallition of countries who are equally concerned about what’s happening. Oh, hang on, wasn’t there a vote in parliment, on taking this action…

Fine Binners, lets turn our backs on whats happening there and flush all our money into your public services, for us.
Nice one.

That is how all missions ended for me on F-16 Combat Pilot on my Amstrad. Never could land the bloody thing!

I actually managed to land my F16, on the runway. Nothing happened, fuel ran out, end of game. Spectrum 48K.

good men and women of the RAF are just being sent to fly around in circles above the desert to look for targets of opportunity,

That’s exactly what they are doing. Remember the Yanks, French and even UAE started bombing before the UK did, so I assume they took out the most obvious targets, plus the Yanks can operate over Syria as well. We are only using 2 planes to bomb so it can’t be costing that much, as presumably they’d be flying training sorties anyway.

I think the reason the West knows this will be a long campaign is that ISIS are not stupid, they are not going to sit around in vehicles presenting an easy target. The air strikes will disable ISIS and prevent them being able to move around freely. The ground troops will then be better able to re-take positions. Once we have better positions on the ground and more SAS spotters we will be able to target the buildings in which ISIS are hiding. There was a piece on the news where ISIS are hiding in a town amongst local civilians on one side of a bridge whilst the Kurds remain on the other. This won’t persist and sooner or later the ISIS fighters are going to be taken out.

Yes all of this equipment costs a lot of money but we quite rightly regard that price as a better one to pay than lost lives.

“Those who do not know history’s mistakes are doomed to repeat them”

The one thing we should learn from history is that history is not learnt from.

oh, and the ‘minimalist strikes’ that we are hearing/ reading about? you are not hearing about the important stuff that’s bound to be going on.

Bazz – Member
So the RAF have been flying sorties for 4 days now and have now managed to find some targets worth attacking, a pick up truck and a gun emplacement. Now i fully believe those who say that we will not defeat IS by air power alone but surely at this rate we will bankrupt the country before we even degrade their capability even a little.

I have a military background and from my experience i would have thought that the military planners and the intelligence bods would have had a list of targets ready to go for when/if parliament authorised the air strikes, it almost seeems like the good men and women of the RAF are just being sent to fly around in circles above the desert to look for targets of oppurtunity, just to show political willing and a tough line.

You clearly missed the bit on the news where it was pointed out that the Americans have attacked 300 targets, but have flown 3000 missions. I make that a 10% success rate.
And your criticism of the RAF’s much smaller mission so far is?
BTW, you haven’t actually said what your ‘military background’ is, perhaps you could enlighten us with your experience in operational planning?
Or possibly you just cleaned the trucks when they came back from ops?
People criticising the RAF seem to forget that IS are spread all over a very large area containing an awful lot of bugger-all, and clearly identifying actual enemy targets from a fast jet when the enemy are using pilfered equipment isn’t one I’d like to be responsible for; the possibility of a blue-on-blue is pretty high, with the subsequent propaganda advantage for IS.
Strikes me that the perfect aircraft for this operation are ground attack planes; A-10’s, Harriers, and Skyraiders, dive-bombing IS vehicles and strongholds from a height and speed where such things are more clearly identified makes more sense, but they are no longer either available to us, (Harrier) or have been taken out of front-line service, (A-10, Skyraider).

Its all about O.I.L. and I.S.R.A.E.L.

Funny that the heat is now off Iran now they’ve started to come around to the idea of letting the Saudi’s build that pipeline to Europe, bypassing Putin………..
How come ?

It about ISIS murdering people and establishing a state that would be a major threat to Western security

The heat isn’t off Iran and We can move oil very efficiently without a pipeline.

The future is fracking anyway, you must have seen than that is what the West (US, and UK in particular) is banking on.

Can you run us through exactly what specific threat ISIS poses to western society exactly? I’m struggling with it. I’m not very bright, to be honest. But I just think it all sounds like the same load of old bollocks that we heard in the dodgy dossier last time around. And what a lot of horse-shit that turned out to be.

Go on though. Does it involve panicking when I see a Toyota hylux? Should I be hiding under the bed at night, fearing for my imminent destruction. Enlighten me….

What is scary is that we have just 6 aircraft deployed with 2 in action at a time, the number of squadrons have been drastically cut in the last few years the RAF isn’t what it used to be by a long shot.Fortunately the USAF is still capable.
Not sure A10 etc would be much good as there has been plenty of info about how vulnerable they are to modern manpads . The harrier had quite a limited range and low loiter time which isn’t good for ground attack.

A modern ground attack/support aircraft or drone would be desirable in a 21st century Royal Air Force but I doubt they will get one

Solo – Member
Yes I see your point now. It’s an extremely expensive way of destroying a Toyota HiLux with a machine gun on it. Bloody politicians are clueless.
Expensive compared to what? Sending in our soldiers? You do realize that if we do that, some will come back in body bags. How expensive is that then?

I don’t recall mentioning sending in troops. I know the value of life on all sides of conflicts. I have lost good friends and a family member and have been on a tour in belfast. You can’t win this war from the air but these idiots as yet pose no threat to the uk. Let the arabs fight them. They are the ones with the most to lose. The have your cake and eat it saudis make me sick to my stomach. Let’s see how true to their faith they really are.

Solo – Member
Yes I see your point now. It’s an extremely expensive way of destroying a Toyota HiLux with a machine gun on it. Bloody politicians are clueless.
Expensive compared to what? Sending in our soldiers? You do realize that if we do that, some will come back in body bags. How expensive is that then?

I don’t recall mentioning sending in troops. I know the value of life on all sides of conflicts. I have lost good friends and a family member and have been on a tour in belfast. You can’t win this war from the air but these idiots as yet pose no threat to the uk. Let the arabs fight them. They are the ones with the most to lose. The have your cake and eat it saudis make me sick to my stomach. Let’s see how true to their faith they really are.