UNDER ATTACK IN JORDAN
The recent death of 3 soldiers and injuries to approximately 40 others at the American Army base in Jordan as well as their subsequent return to the United States and the U S military reaction has led me to several contemplations and musings.
The first thing I wondered about was why our troops were at this base in Jordan. That is not clear, although it may be that they are there to defend Jordan against groups like ISIS. However, it is clear that we have troops in Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Turkey and other countries in the Middle East, it is unclear that there is a logical strategy for this. It looks like just a continuation of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Regardless, as troops are there we presume they are busy with operations and on a high status of alert for attacks from various militias and groups in the Middle East. The place seems to be awash in militias and fighters. That being the case it is hard to understand why the defensive barriers the Army had in place at this base did not detect this drone as an attack drone. The answer given in the news media is that the people on duty thought that the attacking drone was actually a United States drone that had been on an intelligence mission and was returning. We would expect that United States drones emit a signal that indicate they are "good guys" and not to shoot them down. Therefore any other drones picked up on radar by the defensive forces are "bad guys" and to be shot down. The idea that our troops are not able to distinguish between friendly and enemy drones is almost incomprehensible as clearly someone must have expected that at some time we would have returning drones that we would allow through the defensive perimeter at the same time the "bad guys" are shooting their drones at us. This reminded me of December 7th 1941. The Army had installed a new radar system on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii to look for enemy airplanes. When the Japanese assault approached the radar operators informed the duty officers about what was on the screen but the duty officers dismissed it as just airplanes coming in from the continental United States. The radar system worked correctly in 1941 except no one was paying attention to the fact that the airplanes might not be United States planes. Could this Jordan incident be either bad equipment or poor training ?
I also noticed that we have retaliated for two or three days straight now using airplanes flying off of Navy aircraft carriers in the Middle East and bombers from the United States. The Navy planes already in the region made good sense. But I was incredulous that they flew bombers 6000 miles from Texas to also participate in this retaliation. It would seem that we clearly have enough planes and bombs in the Middle East to have completed the retaliation without having to fly in support from Texas. If we don't then our strategic structure may need some review.
The silliness of sending retaliation planes from both the local area and halfway around the globe also struck me as another case of mission creep similar to when the US felt the need to retaliate against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in 1986. The Navy had sufficient aircraft in the Mediterranean to be able to handle the mission but the Air Force wanted to get in on the mission as well and none of our allies in Europe wanted to be caught supporting the mission so the Air Force could not participate from continental Europe. The Air Force did not want miss out on the operation so they arranged to fly planes from Great Britain to Libya by going around continental Europe and refueling them over the Atlantic Ocean. A clear case of mission creep. Unfortunately this is a disease that all of the branches of the military have. When there is to be an operation they all want a share of it. In the case of the attack on Libya it was successfully carried out except one plane did not return to Great Britain. It disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean. Hence a plane that was not needed for the mission became a casualty along with the pilot. It seems like there was a lesson to be learned there.
I also note that the news reports suggest that we were using bombers from Texas so that we would not be accused of using our military assets in the Middle East to carry out a retaliation strike in Iraq and the other locations where they occurred. This sounds to me like government gobbledygook. I doubt that the governments in the countries we bombed will find this commentary meaningful. These statements are much like the comments that came from London Johnson and Robert McNamara as they tried to send "signals" to the North Vietnamese of what their different bombing campaigns meant. I believe most or all of those signals we sent were either not understood or ignored and the only people that paid attention to them where the government officials in Washington DC. Flying bombers from Texas to suggest that this was not really a response of US resources in the Middle East is just a repetition of the gobbledygook we have seen before.
I also noticed the news on the return of the bodies of the three Army Reserve troops from Georgia. They were flown back to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on a C5 transport plane. It struck me as illogical that the plane flew back to Delaware. All of the troops that were killed were from Georgia. We have enough military bases in Georgia that the bodies could have been flown back to a base in Georgia where the remaining troops of their unit in Georgia could have provided them an honor guard from their home unit, the autopsies performed and the families of the three deceased soldiers would not have had to make a trip to Delaware but could have received their loved ones back in their own home state. It does seem to be a case of the military being too busy with their standard military protocol instead of thinking about what is most conducive to the situation for the families involved.
Obadiah Plainman