US Pilot achieve a whole new level of fail

[Hooahguy]

Please, find a way to make it more complicated - then you can become a defence contractor.

Think about it - your computer can do this in a virtual world using internal positioning data - a computer can't tell the difference between "real" and "virtual" it just runs the numbers, the only limit to the effectiveness of the system is the accuracy of GPS data (not a problem) and the accuracy of intel (often a problem).

However, in this instance it seems pretty clear that, actually, the Coalition must have known there was a hospital there.

Well considering neither of us are programmers for military jets (we dont even know what kind of plane it was, it could have been an older one with older targeting software), I will leave this up to the experts. Which neither of us are.

There's the further question of why they're destroying buildings in a friendly city

You clearly havent been reading any news reports about the conflict until now, have you? Kunduz was recently taken by the Taliban after the Afghan army (expectedly) ran away from the fight. Now the Afghan army (with coalition help) are trying to retake it. The city is far from peaceful at the moment.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Well considering neither of us are programmers for military jets (we dont even know what kind of plane it was, it could have been an older one with older targeting software), I will leave this up to the experts. Which neither of us are.

I don't claim to be an expert but I know enough to understand that GPS is data you can always get to inform your targeting.

Re age - I dug this up from 1999:

http://www.navsys.com/papers/9906003.pdf

Wikipedia is also helpful here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missil...#GOLIS_systems

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision-guided_munition

"The precision of these weapons is dependent both on the precision of the measurement system used for location determination and the precision in setting the coordinates of the target. The latter critically depends on intelligence information, not all of which is accurate. According to a CIA report, the accidental United States bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during Operation Allied Force by NATO aircraft was attributed to faulty target information.[13] However, if the targeting information is accurate, satellite-guided weapons are significantly more likely to achieve a successful strike in any given weather conditions than any other type of precision-guided munition."

So you have a GPS guided system where human operators, in the air or on the ground, are inputing the wrong co-ordinates. At whatever stage you are inputing said co-ordinates it would be trivial to insert a stage which checks against a list of "invalid" targets, taking into account munition type and blast radius, and returns a red flag.

That's really basic computing.

You clearly havent been reading any news reports about the conflict until now, have you? Kunduz was recently taken by the Taliban after the Afghan army (expectedly) ran away from the fight. Now the Afghan army (with coalition help) are trying to retake it. The city is far from peaceful at the moment.

No - I have, and it's a valid question. Why are we destroying infrastructure in a friendly city we are trying to recapture?

[Hooahguy]

I dont know enough about GPS and targeting to really argue so as Ive said before, Im going to wait until more information becomes available.

No - I have, and it's a valid question. Why are we destroying infrastructure in a friendly city we are trying to recapture?

Welcome to urban warfare. Expecting to retake a city from enemy hands mostly intact is a fantasy at best.

[Montmorency]

Welcome to urban warfare. Expecting to retake a city from enemy hands mostly intact is a fantasy at best.

What is the point of urban warfare? More generally, what is the point of warfare? To achieve some political end.

The taking of a city is only a means to an end.

And to be frank, destroying cities in Afghanistan has always been harmful to our desired ends - even more so now that we don't even have a significant ground presence.

[Hooahguy]

Right. Which is why we arent the ones leading the charge to retake the city. The Afghan army is. They lost it, they gotta take it back. We will help of course but the main thrust is being done by Afghan forces.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I dont know enough about GPS and targeting to really argue so as Ive said before, Im going to wait until more information becomes available.

I'll have my "told you so" ready, then.

Welcome to urban warfare. Expecting to retake a city from enemy hands mostly intact is a fantasy at best.

Welcome to Urban Warfare done badly - you may wish to consider some historical examples, including WWII, where shelling prior to sending in the infantry actually worsened the result.

The US has done Urban warfare badly since at least Vietnam, because you fetishise your soldiers you are unwilling to spend them to re-take a city street by street, so you spend civilian lives instead.

That's the thing, despite all these airstrikes you'll still end up having running gun battles in the streets where some poor sod will get cut off, go down a blind alley and get painted against the wall.

[Hooahguy]

Welcome to Urban Warfare done badly - you may wish to consider some historical examples, including WWII, where shelling prior to sending in the infantry actually worsened the result.

The US has done Urban warfare badly since at least Vietnam, because you fetishise your soldiers you are unwilling to spend them to re-take a city street by street, so you spend civilian lives instead.

That's the thing, despite all these airstrikes you'll still end up having running gun battles in the streets where some poor sod will get cut off, go down a blind alley and get painted against the wall.

Lol ok expert on urban warfare.

Its obviously just that simple. How has nobody ever tried that before?!



EDIT: This is bothering me so I need to reply more.

This isnt the Somme, we dont throw men into the meat grinder anymore. Nowadays we try to mitigate casualties as much as we can, both our own and civilian. Thats why we dont just carpet bomb cities anymore like we used to. I mean if we didnt care then we would just carpet bomb Kunduz and use the money we are bribing Afghan officials with to rebuild the city. Would probably be cheaper as well.

To say "oh just send in soldiers with no support to retake a city, Im sure they will be fine! Yeah they will take prohibitively high casualties, and when the mass of body bags start coming home and the TV crews show the gruesome cost in allied lives, the public will totally be okay with it because hey, we might mitigate some civilian casualties!" is just asinine. It doesnt work that way. To think that it would work is just delusion.

Oh yeah-

because you fetishise your soldiers you are unwilling to spend them to re-take a city street by street

Seriously?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

This isnt the Somme, we dont throw men into the meat grinder anymore. Nowadays we try to mitigate casualties as much as we can, both our own and civilian. Thats why we dont just carpet bomb cities anymore like we used to. I mean if we didnt care then we would just carpet bomb Kunduz and use the money we are bribing Afghan officials with to rebuild the city. Would probably be cheaper as well.

To say "oh just send in soldiers with no support to retake a city, Im sure they will be fine! Yeah they will take prohibitively high casualties, and when the mass of body bags start coming home and the TV crews show the gruesome cost in allied lives, the public will totally be okay with it because hey, we might mitigate some civilian casualties!" is just asinine. It doesnt work that way. To think that it would work is just delusion.

Oh yeah-

Seriously?
[/QUOTE]

Yes - seriously. Soldiers' lives are a resource, just like bullets or tanks. Now, to be sure, they are a valuable resource but if we're going to get into the morality of the "numbers game" viz how much an individual's life is worth then we might as well give up on war altogether.

As far as I have seen the American armed forces, and the American public are generally considered to over-value the lives of their servicemen in relation to the wider context of a given operation. This has been a prevailing British opinion for at least a few decades, if not since Vietnam.

During the later stages of combat operation in Afghanistan the British forces were criticised for using "American tactics" which means essentially calling in airstrikes on enemy positions that could be assaulted on the ground.

Now, this is not to say there should be no artillery support, far from it, but American doctrine in "Urban Combat" often includes flattening potential enemy position or choke points. Remember the missiles they fired down roads in Fallujah to remove *potential* land mines? Not only did they make all the roads impassable they knocked out all the water and electricity mains going into the city, triggering a humanitarian crisis.

In an urban environment, particularly an allied city, we should be aiming for judicious use of minimal destructive power, not shock and awe.

Imagine retaking an American city and half the city is rubble before you're done. How would that swing with the American media and public?

[Hooahguy]

Yes - seriously. Soldiers' lives are a resource, just like bullets or tanks. Now, to be sure, they are a valuable resource but if we're going to get into the morality of the "numbers game" viz how much an individual's life is worth then we might as well give up on war altogether.

As far as I have seen the American armed forces, and the American public are generally considered to over-value the lives of their servicemen in relation to the wider context of a given operation. This has been a prevailing British opinion for at least a few decades, if not since Vietnam.

I guess that explains the Somme then.

If you, and as you seem to claim a large section of the British public, really think that a soldiers life is the same as a bullet or tank then I really do not understand your sense of morals at all.

Now, this is not to say there should be no artillery support, far from it, but American doctrine in "Urban Combat" often includes flattening potential enemy position or choke points. Remember the missiles they fired down roads in Fallujah to remove *potential* land mines? Not only did they make all the roads impassable they knocked out all the water and electricity mains going into the city, triggering a humanitarian crisis.

Potential? Read any first hand account of the Second Battle of Fallujah, where the use of the mine-clearing line charge (which is what you are referring to as "missiles") was prevalent, and you would know that the roads in Fallujah were covered in IEDs. Now then, considering the destructive power of IEDs, I think tearing up a road is much more preferable to losing human lives. And considering that most of the civilian population evacuated (if government estimates can be trusted, anywhere between 70-90% of the civilians cleared out before the fighting), it sucks that the remaining civilians had to deal with no water or electricity but sometimes its unavoidable. Its the harsh reality of war that innocents suffer. We can do what we can to alleviate their suffering but the end goal must be to destroy the enemy. Deploying the line charges might have messed up the roads (which were fixed after the battle anyways) but you cannot deny that it also saved lives.

In an urban environment, particularly an allied city, we should be aiming for judicious use of minimal destructive power, not shock and awe.

You keep neglecting to say that at the moment it is not an allied city. Yes, coalition forces arent trying to wipe out the town but to say that just because coalition forces are trying to take it back that we shouldnt launch airstrikes against reported Taliban positions is tactical stupidity.

Imagine retaking an American city and half the city is rubble before you're done. How would that swing with the American media and public?

If it resulted in the capture of the city, then I would guess that the main response would be "well that really sucks that the town is now half rubble, but Im sure glad that we took the city and now we can rebuild."