March 24, 2011

Hillaire Belloc on the Libya War

Whatever happens, we have got
The JDAM bomb, and they have not.

By Steve Sailer on 3/24/2011

32 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought all this bored you.

Sure bores me.

3/24/11, 1:52 PM
Whiskey said...

Except the JDAM does not create dominance. Airplanes cannot linger for hours or days over a battlefield. They cannot hold ground. Much less take it. Hunker down, in deep shelters, spread out, use civilian shields, US airpower as Saddam found for 13 years, or Osama has found since 9/11, is eminently defeatable. All you have to do is be prepared to outwait the US.

US Airpower is very limited. Alone, it cannot hold or take ground. Which is the essence of victory. We are looking at the first ignominious defeat of the US, presided over by Obama (who secretly wishes US defeat).

3/24/11, 1:59 PM
Automatic_Wing said...

Ha ha, very good. Wish I'd thought of that.

3/24/11, 2:11 PM
dearieme said...

It certainly seems to bore the International Man of Mystery too. Why on earth did he want to be President?

3/24/11, 2:14 PM
Luke Lea said...

"Except the JDAM does not create dominance. Airplanes cannot linger for hours or days over a battlefield."

Drones can. Maybe we should just target Quaddafi and be done with it?

3/24/11, 2:56 PM
none of the above said...

We'll kill insurgents
(the ones we find)
'till china tells us
our card's declined

3/24/11, 3:04 PM
Munch said...

What will our miliary be like if some emeny, China perhaps, gains the technology to put out our GPS satalites?

No JDAMS, no smart bombs, no ability to dial in the addresss you want destroyed. Suddenly on the battlefield mastery of the air meets confusion on the ground.

I would even hazard a guess that most solders are now as dependent on a GPS as the average driver.

3/24/11, 3:43 PM
American Sensei said...

God, Whiskey is really an ignoramus. A few days into the conflict, and he says we're "defeated." And this is apparently the "first ignominious defeat of the US." Since when? Since Reagan pulled out of Lebanon after 200 Marines were slaughtered? And how in the heck has the US already been defeated? Four days in, and Whiskey knows the result?

Very excitable, immature commentary.

3/24/11, 4:05 PM
Anonymous said...

"Why on earth did he want to be President?"

Because he realized he could.

I have always felt this man did not, does not, enjoy the job (as most of us would not.) Even before the foreign issues began to dominate, I am sure he woke up one night and said to himself, "Damn, now I see what they mean by saying executive experience matters in this job. I just like giving the speeches."

3/24/11, 4:17 PM
Anonymous said...

More importantly we have multiculturalism and a civil-liberties obsessed judiciary, so Libyan terrorists can enter our territory at will.

3/24/11, 4:52 PM
Dave said...

What will our miliary be like if some emeny, China perhaps, gains the technology to put out our GPS satalites?

No JDAMS, no smart bombs...

We'd still have laser-guided bombs.

3/24/11, 4:55 PM
Henry Canaday said...

JDAMs have apparently allowed aircraft to replace much of artillery, as they give bombs the accuracy of observed artillery fire, at much longer range.

I went to an Irish play at the Kenney Center over the Christmas holidays and sat next to a very nice young couple. The girl was a beautiful Chinese-American, and the boy (about 25 years old) was a tall, crew-cut Euro-American. He was a Marine platoon commander, so he and I sat talking about Marine history. He told me my old battery, a 155-millimeter self-propelled gun battery, had long gone, along with a lot of batteries, their functions taken over by JDAMs and aircraft.

More than batteries fade. I asked the lieutenant if he had seen the recent production of “South Pacific.” He was an intelligent young man, well-versed in contemporary culture, but had never heard of the show.

A Marine who has never heard of “South Pacific?” I was about to tell him, “the Marine falls in love with an Asian girl and dies, the Frenchman gets the blonde,” but I stifled.

I felt very old and useless.

3/24/11, 6:09 PM
Steve Sailer said...

After WWII, Broadway loved plays set during the Pacific War: "South Pacific," "Mr. Roberts" and "Caine Mutiny Court Martial" all were big hits.

3/24/11, 7:15 PM
Anonymous said...

Steve, OT, but had to post this:

http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/2011/03/san-francisco-becoming-child-free-zone-youth-population-declines

The most idiotic comment from a city bureaucrat: “I’m very surprised,” said Margaret Brodkin, the former head of the Department Children, Youth and Their Families. “I thought we had finally turned the corner in being a more child-friendly city and keeping families in The City.”

Like there aren't certain reasons families don't stay in the City by the Bay?

3/24/11, 7:40 PM
Anonymous said...

OT: Justice Department gets federal court ruling that school has to accommodate muslim teacher with a 19 hadj request.

This seems similar to your other arguments about the way that we encourage nonmajority identity by giving out spoils. By title vii's religious accommodation provisions we encourage religiousness over nonreligiousness and encourage extreme religiousness the most. If you're not religious, you're not entitled to a 19 day vacation.

http://volokh.com/2010/12/14/department-of-justice-enforces-the-sharia-sues-illinois-school-district-for-muslim-teacher-hajj/

3/24/11, 7:45 PM
YR said...

Whiskey's comment (secretly wishes US defeat) reminds of me of something I thought of the other day. Does Obama have any motivation to stop a terrorist attack against the United States?

He'll likely get a bump in approval ratings, his agencies will get more power, lots of bureaucrats will get promotions and raises, and a few more of those typical white racists will die.

Wins all around from his point of view.

3/24/11, 7:46 PM
Dennis Dale said...

I'll give greater thanks to the Atlantic.

3/24/11, 7:56 PM
Anonymous said...

Airplanes cannot linger for hours or days over a battlefield."

Not days, but hours? Yes!

The AC-130 Gunship.

3/24/11, 7:58 PM
Anonymous said...

"JDAMs have apparently allowed aircraft to replace much of artillery, as they give bombs the accuracy of observed artillery fire, at much longer range."

A shame really. Never hurts to have Big Toms around...

3/24/11, 8:03 PM
Anonymous said...

Whatever happens
They have got
Five million crazy Muslims
And we have not.

3/24/11, 8:49 PM
travis said...

It's not the Libya War. It's Operation Odyssey Dawn. Lawrence O'donnell, a political hack with a show on MSNBC, challenged his audience to come up with a better name for the operation. Apparently Pentagon rules require that the first name of the operation must begin with an O and the second name must begin with a letter between A and F. The winning submission from a viewer: Operation Obama Cares.

3/24/11, 9:27 PM
Auntie Analogue said...

In unlimited numbers the enemy has his own, globally mobile, highly effective version of the JDAM. It's called MECCA: Mohammedan Exploding Carcass Committed Attacker.

3/24/11, 10:42 PM
Black Sea said...

Operation Open Ended?

3/24/11, 11:06 PM
Anonymous said...

OT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqewCzpfmqU

A pretty twisted western about race and sex by John Huston. Has a great hanging scene and a final shoot out somewhere between tragic and absurd. But Hepburn doesn't look 'Injun' noway no how.

3/24/11, 11:22 PM
none of the above said...

YR:

It's hard to imagine Obama betting on getting a popularity bump from a terrorist attack. My guess is, it would hurt him far more than it would help him.

OTOH, it worked for Bush, who would very likely have been a one-term, not-very-powerful president without the 9/11 attacks. People often unite in the face of an attack by outsiders, especially when surrounded by propaganda instructing them that it's the only right thing to do. Bush got that from the MSM, and I imagine Obama would manage to get it, too.

3/25/11, 5:47 AM
Anonymous said...

JDAMs have apparently allowed aircraft to replace much of artillery, as they give bombs the accuracy of observed artillery fire, at much longer range.

He told me my old battery, a 155-millimeter self-propelled gun battery, had long gone, along with a lot of batteries, their functions taken over by JDAMs and aircraft.

Was this marine referring to the USMC not having any self propelled artillery, or was he referring to the Army? I was not aware that the USMC used self propelled artillery in the first place. I've always seem them with towed artillery. The Army still has plenty of self propelled artillery with the M-109A6. And I think they will remain in service awhile. They need it to keep up with their armored forces.

JDAMs are greatly reducing the number of sorties needed to destroy a target, but they are not replacing artillery. Helicopters with aerial rockets are more of a substitute than JDAMs. If anything artillery is being augmented by the addition in the past 2 decades of guided rockets, like the MLRS and the HIMARS, and GPS guided artillery rounds like Excalibur..

JDAMs are accurate and can take out pinpoint targets, but you don't get the saturation effect you do with a barrage of rockets or shells. JDAMs obviously are useful for long range missions, but the number of them carried per plane is limited. And if they are carried by manned aircraft, the crews are put in danger. Think about that F-15E that went down earlier this week.

JDAMs are not going to replace artillery because in close situations, under 25 miles, you still need a high volume of steel to decimate grid-square sized areas.

3/25/11, 10:20 AM
Anonymous said...

On Topic:

Technology gets better fast. As someone posted : what about robot planes? We can already launch a jet drone from America that will fly anywhere in the world. Presumably we could have it drop a neutron bomb perhaps a JDAM "Enhanced Radiation" bomb.

The problem isn't technology it's will. We're afraid of what Jerry Pournelle calls "Teddy Bears" - TV coverage of the decimation of innocent civilians.

Off Topic #1

When I lived in downtown Washington DC and traveled every week, I bought my wife a gun. When we moved back to San Francisco we traded Black neighbors for Gay neighbors - an excellent exchange.

Gays in San Francisco are occasionally a little embarrassing walking around with their asses bare but they are in all other ways excellent neighbors. First of all Blacks have a marginal propensity to rape (MPR) about seven times that of normal whites. This is not a problem with gays. If they rape at all it's only their own kind.

Secondly Gays are good for property values. They tend to be slim young men (they keep in shape and die young)who can really fix up a fixer upper. Almost any place in the world where Blacks move in the value of the homes plummet. But Gays are the perfect shock troops for gentrification. A hetero couple has typically one person (the man) who will climb on the roof. A gay couple has two. In a hetero couple there is usually one person (the woman) who is sensitive to decor. A Gay couple again has two.

Off Topic #2

It is true that Audrey Hepburn doesn't look very much like an Indian in the Unforgiven. But when have you ever seen a female Indian in the movies? Indian girls are pretty only in Disney cartoons. In live action movies they are played by Caucasians (The Unforgiven) or Chinese (Little Big Man).

There is a lot of controversy about which women are the most beautiful but there is more agreement about which are the ugliest - American Indians.

Albertosaurus

3/25/11, 10:23 AM
Steiner said...

Great fun. But what interests us here are the common, um, characteristics of the states that always seem to come up with weapons like the JDAM, as opposed to the other states that, at best, copy such innovations, military or otherwise.

3/25/11, 11:06 AM
Anonymous said...

Whatever happens, they have got

a reason to fight, and we have not.

3/25/11, 12:39 PM
Rob said...

Anonymous said...
Whatever happens
They have got
Five million crazy Muslims
And we have not.

Not yet...

3/26/11, 12:45 PM
TGGP said...

I remembered seeing a picture of an attractive native american actress (might have been that Terence Malick film, or maybe the Viking one), so I went looking through this Wikipedia list to refute Anonymous. I failed.

3/26/11, 8:38 PM
Anonymous said...

Albertosaurus,
I think you're being a bit provincial. Australian aboriginals are the ugliest I've seen, but don't tell an Aussie that.

Hopefully Anonymous
http://www.hopeanon.typepad.com

3/27/11, 4:19 PM

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