I am watching it on NBC...it's a huge bombing campaign...mushroom clouds all around...buildings destroyed...
Posted by Cartmaniac (Member # 256) on :
You're watching what a fleet of B-52's, carrying a total of 3000 bombs, can do to a city.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
So far, I'm neither shocked, nor awed. Perhaps they built it up a little too much.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
And judging by the cars on the Baghdad roads, neither were the Iraqis...
Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
TSN: Of course you weren't shocked, nor awed. Its "Shock and Awe." Just as with the Axis of Evil, the capital letters are Very important.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Really, anything short of firebombing the whole city wouldn't have left me particularly shocked. In fact, I'm almost shocked that's not what happened...
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
The BBC have got this one camera showing this street in Baghdad that they use all the time to 'check up on the situation'. I am looking forward to the next reality TV show that will undoubtably feature this street.
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
But it never shows anything happening, which is why everyone keeps using the Aljazeera and Abudhabi TV feeds instead.
In fact, given the BBC have about 400 people in the Gulf, they're not getting a lot for their �10million budget. Sky News is way ahead in the war porn stakes.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Can somebody explain why there is no blackout in Baghdad? Is it just to provide better illumination for the pictoresque photography? Or to help direct the bombers to their supposed military targets, instead of residential areas? Or did somebody just forget to flip the switch?
Or does Rumsfeld have this horrible secret microwave pulse weapon that keeps feeding power to the local grid no matter how desperately the engineers try to shut it down?
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poet: But it never shows anything happening, which is why everyone keeps using the Aljazeera and Abudhabi TV feeds instead.
Precisely!! It must be the one rooftop in the entire city from which nothing is visible!
Posted by Dr. Phlox (Member # 878) on :
Now let's have a look at the Baghdad skyline. Er, yes, well as you can see, it looks quite peaceful there, but believe us, it is total carnage. If we just switch to somebody else's camera... are, there we go.
Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
quote:Originally posted by Timo: Can somebody explain why there is no blackout in Baghdad? Is it just to provide better illumination for the pictoresque photography? Or to help direct the bombers to their supposed military targets, instead of residential areas? Or did somebody just forget to flip the switch?
Or does Rumsfeld have this horrible secret microwave pulse weapon that keeps feeding power to the local grid no matter how desperately the engineers try to shut it down?
Timo Saloniemi
This is intended. Part of the objective is to cause as few civilian casualties as possible, and to damage the actual Iraqi infrastructure as little as possible, to not cause a severe humanitarian crisis for Iraqi civilians. They are therefore deliberately not targeting such places as electric power plants, sewage treatment systems, or water facilities.
One water facility in the south of Iraq was apparently damaged, cutting off water to about 60% of the local population, but they expect the aid and repair crews to begin coming in in.. well, it was 36 hours, yesterday, IIRC.
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
I think he was asking why Baghdad themselves hadn't turned off their lights. SOP when you're being bombed, IIRC.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
Yes, and the Iraqi regime couldn't care less about the people, they're probably grumpy the americanos haven't killed more civilians than they have already. They really should've started with blackouts by now, it is peculiar indeed.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Does that even help? I mean.. even with the lights out, the Americans still know where and what to hit. Besides, with the power down, people couldn't enjoy the daily Saddam admiration video clips.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
Cardassians would have to be Saddam's fav Trek race. :-)
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
But oval viewscreens make him look fat.
Still no blackout in Baghdad. It's �ber-silly. To hit anything smaller than a Presidential Palace, you have to laser-illuminate, which requires you to be able to acquire the target visually, which is damn sight easier if the city is lit than if you have to wander in the dark with NVGs. And as long as you illuminate for your buddy, you are a good target for the SAMs and the AAA.
High tech hasn't outdated blackouts yet. Even partial stealth counts, or else things like the F-117 wouldn't have been built...
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Perhaps they're just to proud to hide in the darkness for the American devil scumbag criminal soldiers.
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
The funny thing is, there are so many foreign journalists out on the roofs watching the (brightly-lit) show, some of them could well be Special Forces with laser targetting equipment and the Iraqis'd never know it.
Posted by Kosh (Member # 167) on :
quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poet: The funny thing is, there are so many foreign journalists out on the roofs watching the (brightly-lit) show, some of them could well be Special Forces with laser targetting equipment and the Iraqis'd never know it.
I always thought there was something odd about Ted Koppel and Peter Arnult, or however you spell it.
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
That is a pretty rough way to play laser tag, and makes the person that should be 'it' kind of slow and groggy....
I think that they can hit a small store with out the laser aiming.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
In theory, the JDAM bombs (the simple iron bombs with those fancy strakes bolted onto the midbody and with the extra tailfins) can hit a target within a 20m circle 95% of the time if the GPS coordinates of that target are known and if sufficiently many satellites are visible to the bomb throughout its flight. Even without GPS, they are claimed to have 30m CEP if the coordinates are known and the onboard INS doesn't hiccup. All that without illumination.
In practice, the JDAM is not the weapon of choice for targets that require accurate hits. Laser guidance for those older Paveway series bombs still is the standard method, and F-117 and F-15E are reputed to be the the main delivery aircraft. Those do need to loiter above the target to illuminate, and pretty low, too, when there's smoke and dust in the air.
Navy F-14s and some F/A-18s have some limited illumination capability, but they mainly deliver JDAMs and dumb weapons, and aren't used above Baghdad AFAIK (or AFA Aviation Week knows). The Harriers cannot JDAM AFAIK, but two-ships of them work as hunter-killer pairs with Paveways or cluster bombs. B-52 is a JDAM and dumb bomb platform for the most part.
There may be some GPS jamming capacity in Iraq, as it's not that hard to come by. And of course they can always move the city fifteen meters to the left between bombing runs to confuse the hell out of GPS-guided weapons.
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