Yes. That was the first pull. I wasn’t referring to this or that in isolation. Eventually someone was going to have to level that place.

Had it been before the proliferation of cheap drones, this would be looking very different right now.

If only there was a multi year conflict that we are a principle supporter of whose primary means of destruction has been drones that we could intel share with.

Also, I want to point out how silly it sounds to say, effectively, that if they'd be fighting a war that we planned for 20 years ago, things would be different. War has literally always been cutting edge.

It only sounds silly if your opponents version of cutting edge was an F-14 in 2006.

Their version of cutting edge is using cheap flying IEDs against an opponent who only planned on defending against F-14s. It doesn't have to be flashy and $1B to be effective. There are very few countries on earth that are capable of going toe to toe with the US military which, you'd think, we would have figured that out during the 20 year quagmire in that exact same region.

So you are agreeing with me then.

Military procurement really can’t do cheap. Not won’t, but literally can’t. The labyrinthian procurement laws stacked upon one another by Congress over the last hundred years really preclude any but the few big established defense contractors from bidding on pretty much any requests for proposals - just because of the overhead of keeping in place people who understand the damn rules. Then, assuming you really are successful in the years long process you have to split the work up into 40-50 pieces to farm out enough of the work to enough states to assure that Congress will actually fund the production. So the process of contracting is guaranteed to be long and expensive and the production itself will be widely geographically distributed and involve intricate supply chains with all the logistics and management issues that requires.

Worst of all, you have so few competitors due to the resulting defense contractor consolidation that you have no real way of managing them because they are now too damn big to allow them to fail. Look at Boeing and all the problems with the KC-46.The selection of the Boeing bid was made in 2011 as the KCX to replace the KC-135. Now, 15 years later, the KC-135 is still an integral part of the tanker force and Boeing is still working on getting the KC-46 up to the contract requirements. But you can’t really discipline Boeing. You let them fail and no one can support the aircraft they’ve already delivered.

Just out of curiosity, how many of you out there work for airlines still flying the 707?

No, I really didn’t think so.

You have to wonder how the KC46 would have played out had Northrop/Airbus kept their initial win.

yeah. That part of the procurement chain delayed things another 4-5 years IIRC.

My surface level observation of this whole thing: I feel like we tend to so much better quietly with SOF and aerial assets operating quietly than whenever we try these big "conventional" operations in the public eye. The nuke site bombing actually seemed to go well since there was a clearly defined goal and objective.

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https://understandingwar.org/researc...lenges-remain/