Logistical Capabilities
and Their Limitations
(A CO's Viewpoint!)
Perfection In Logistical Capability For Long-Range Missions:The B-52
In over 4 decades no replacement has been found for the B-52 bomber.
The Gulf war has shown that the FB-111 [F-111] capable of delivering high accuracy precision weapons from a stealth environment is the way for the future of warfare.
There will always be a need for more specialized long range heavy duty stealth aircraft calibrated to specific missions but the overall direction would appear to be RPVs – at least in aerial missions and variations of F-111's.
Unofficially, military planners are always fighting the last war – especially if they have won it – so do not take the above as 'written in stone'.
When the Real Challenge Will Come
The Gulf War and all wars America has engaged in since WWII were all mismatches.
Not a single war the United States has engaged in since World War II has placed the armed forces of the United States directly up against the capabilities of any superpower or advanced nation which is it's equal in technology and in firepower.
The Luxury Of Choice
All were wars of choice and convenience and none were needed to be fought for the security of the United States on the homeland front.
None were fought because an adversary had attacked the territory of the United States but to either support an ally or to defend strategic, economic and political interests overseas.
The Limitations Of Operational Capabilities
But what happens when you have all of the technological and logistical capabilities in place and the enemy has none -absolutely none.
Is success a guaranteed outcome?
Military strategists and lecturers would say to greenhorns ' well of course'.
If they say this, then ask them about Benghazi on September 11, 2012.
Benghazi, Libya, Was A Game Changer
What happened in Benghazi Libya in 2012 was a game changer.
On several occasions rescue missions were repeatedly told to stand down and not to rescue Ambassador Stevens and his team from what were hours of firefight stand-off against repeated attacks by extremists on the de facto Embassy ('the Compound'.)
The logistical capabilities existed but the political will did not.
Political decisions determined Ambassador Chris Stevens' fate at the end of the day.
So even an American Ambassador was expendable
What this demonstrated was that having logistical capabilities for an aerial strike(s) and rescue missions, even at arms length, are utterly useless if the political will does not exist to successfully effect an outcome.
Where Faith Is Not Enough
[I have thought repeatedly what I would have done in that same situation. I think that I might have defied military orders and risked court-martial and end of career to effect that rescue – especially if I had personally known the Ambassador and his team. [Friendship can often be thicker than blood.]
I know that there are individuals who have anguished and who are haunted about the orders which they were given at that time – to the point of suicide – to this very day.
These officers trusted the judgement of the politicians – their ultimate commanders-in-chiefs - and dutifully followed their orders in the chain of command. To this day, some feel betrayed by the politicians they served believing in their judgement and decisions in the best interests of the country – The United States - and it's Allies.]
Realpolitik
To repeat, the logistical capabilities existed to save the Ambassador and his team but politics determined the order and outcome of the day.
Drone capabilities existed for real time analysis.
All the technology and firepower required to rescue the most important representative of any superpower and his team were all in place.
Despite all these factors, as I said at that time, the Ambassador and his team were sacrificed as expendable.
Again I have covered this in fine detail and you can do a search out of the articles under 'Benghazi' or 'Libya' or 'Ambassador Stevens' or 'Libya Congressional Reports' to confirm these facts.
Fiction
[My decision to have a web presence was directly motivated by this event. Before this, I had always assumed 'it was not my call' nor 'responsibility' to be promulgating my views across the Internet.
Let someone else do that. Besides, I am a bit long-in-the-teeth and a technological dinosaur. I can't even program my mobile phone properly.
The brutal manner with which these murders took place, their videoing and broadcast across the web – for a world audience - in every extreme detail – convinced me that we all have a responsibility to counteract ideals and values which are ultimately determined to destroy our ways of life and the democratic structures as currently existing and replace them with worse models than we could ever imagine in our worst of nightmares.]
We Can all Do Business - Just Like Before
Like many analysts, for a while, I too was under the impression that 'you could do business' with the Islamic State and I was in the process of re-engaging contacts for interviews for a planned book about ISIS.
My views about ISIS also changed around this time.
Night Of The Long Knives
In the autumn of 2012, following the Benghazi massacres, the equivalent of a military decapitation took place in the United States with the replacement of senior commanders.
To this day it has never been fully explained whether it was the politicians attempting to 'cover their tracks' or sacking for 'incompetence' related to the Benghazi incident – or just that they 'knew too much' and needed to be 'moved on', urgently.
No concrete proof has ever been provided which in any way link these Benghazi butchers to any faction of ISIL/ISIS. There are 'missing links' in this regard and only the piecing of them all together will answer the unsolved questions with regard to the butchers of Benghazi.
[There are also suggestions of CIA funding of these same factions who, it was alleged, turned against their funders because of disputes over money and weapons.
No evidence has ever been provided in open Congressional sessions even to this day that such was the case. It is also rumored that proof of such allegations have been highly classified and that officers and assets may have 'been sacrificed' to protect what were highly sensitive operations taking place between Turkey and Libya in support of ISIL/ISIS at that time.
I still cannot accept to this day that any Ambassador of the world's greatest superpower can be left as a 'sacrificial lamb' for a 'greater' or 'higher' political good or outcome. No good ever came out of the butchery of Ambassador Stevens and his team. Indeed quite the opposite, it has been 'downhill' ever since his absence (or removal) from the debate.]
Where The Ideals Of Diplomacy Expire
I covered this appalling and shameful historical episode in U.S. diplomatic political and military blunders in full from beginning to the Congressional Inquiry and I presented in articles or blogs at this website as much data as was publicly released – even data which Members alleged existed but for which there was no available evidence to support their allegations, all in the vain hope of continuing the debate and thorough investigation of circumstances surrounding the calculated sacrifice of, not assets, but key personnel, of the highest order.
Even Russia would never have allowed such carnage of key personnel to go unavenged.
Lessons Which Have Not Been Learned To This Day
The point of introducing Libya into a debate about resources, assets, aerial technology and firepower, is to emphasize the fact that, even with the most advanced capabilities weapons technologies and resources available for deployment and effective use, without the political will (or indeed in the absence of a mentally well-balanced military commander, by chance or design, in place to over-ride an incorrect or common-sense-flawed political decision - or a decision you instinctively know to be in error) all the logistics, the firepower, the capabilities, assets and resources available for deployment and effective use, are all utterly useless at a time of extreme crisis, even by the world's foremost superpower.
On this note I will end and leave the forward debate to my intelligent readership.
