ISIL, ISIS, Daesh discussion thread.

Rofflay said:
Seems Raqqa has no water or electricity at the minute if you believe the DM there is panic. Just goes to show all this sitting back was useless and at worst sinister. Russia and now France has done more damage in a few weeks than the entire campaign by Shiekh Obama.
Click to expand...

Does make you wonder what the US/UK airstikes have consisted of.
Why is there still one upturned brick left in Raqqua to bomb? It should have been levelled by now.
Maybe we were dropping leaflets on them.
 
majestyk said:
Does make you wonder what the US/UK airstikes have consisted of.
Why is there still one upturned brick left in Raqqua to bomb? It should have been levelled by now.
Maybe we were dropping leaflets on them.
Click to expand...

Entitled "Your next airdrop is being hand delivered by a hernes driver".
 
majestyk said:
Does make you wonder what the US/UK airstikes have consisted of.
Why is there still one upturned brick left in Raqqua to bomb? It should have been levelled by now.
Maybe we were dropping leaflets on them.
Click to expand...

We could easily have levelled the town.
Levelling a town is something that is probably not hard with modern aircraft, and there are large numbers of "dumb" bombs in inventory.

The problem is just dropping bombs at random rarely gets the people you want (who will be far better prepared than the general population and likely either able to leave at the first sign of an aircraft or able to get into shelter), but will end up killing vast numbers of innocent people who couldn't get out.

And if you want to give ISIS a lovely early Christmas present of a recruiting tool, bombing indiscriminately and killing large numbers of civilians would be ideal (it's pretty much the response they want).

IIRC the UK/US airstrikes have been targeting specific people and positively identified ISIS fighters, buildings and vehicles, but there is a limit to how many such limited attacks any one country can do in a day as it requires a lot more than just an aircraft with some bombs (you need intelligence assets to track the targets for example, preferably tracking the people/vehicles right up till they're hit).

The Russians have been basically targeting any rebels in Syria including those fighting ISIS as well as Assad, and haven't really cared about being precise (IIRC they've been using area affect weapons and poor accuracy bombs).

I suspect the French have stepped up their campaign but may not have the resources to keep it up indefinitely, as things like modern munitions are not exactly made in huge numbers constantly, and they probably don't have the airframes to keep doing high numbers of missions per day for long (part of the reason for moving their carrier into the area will be to increase the number of aircraft and the maintenance facilities for them).
 
The Running Man said:
So tell me. Did the location of this training camp come to light since the attack on Paris? Or have we a list of targets but choose not to attack them?
Click to expand...

I saw an aerial photograph a few weeks ago showing the ISIS HQ

It's still standing, so I'm not sure why it hasn't been blown to pieces

I do find it slightly laughable that ISIS even have an HQ
 
The Running Man said:
So tell me. Did the location of this training camp come to light since the attack on Paris? Or have we a list of targets but choose not to attack them?
Click to expand...

I suspect they'd have a list of lots of buildings that have % of chance of being used in one form or another. They probably wouldn't hit them all as they'd just shift their purpose elsewhere. Hit them when you know it'll cause max damage, ie when a meeting is taking place.
French need a quick win to show their people they are hitting back and really, you can't blame them.

Flattening the place isn't an option, you'll only turn civilians caught up there and harden the position of those who've joined as they saw no other path.
 
Washout said:
I suspect they'd have a list of lots of buildings that have % of chance of being used in one form or another. They probably wouldn't hit them all as they'd just shift their purpose elsewhere. Hit them when you know it'll cause max damage, ie when a meeting is taking place.
French need a quick win to show their people they are hitting back and really, you can't blame them.

Flattening the place isn't an option, you'll only turn civilians caught up there and harden the position of those who've joined as they saw no other path.
Click to expand...

Pretty much it, they'll probably have a long list of buildings that are known to have been visited by various ISIS people, that coms relating to ISIS have been picked up from and that are known to hold weapons or equipment at different times.

Normally in such instances you don't drop a bomb on a building that is known to be used occasionally but is currently empty (or being used by obvious civilians), as it's pointless to just blow up an empty building. Instead you wait until it's actually in use and then try and get it.
They'll also try to avoid dropping bombs on buildings where they suspect hostages are being kept.

There will also be possible targets they don't hit because it makes more operational sense to sit back and watch who is going there and tracking them. Rather like the way the police won't arrest every drug dealer immediately if they're trying to make an impact on the local drug trade, as they'll try and follow some of the lower level ones and see where they're getting the drugs from.
In both instances the number of low level people will be high enough that you could be dealing with them every day and not make a dent in the problem, but if you leave that low level person for a while you are likely to find out who they're dealing with on a regular basis which can lead you to the more senior people. For example you follow an ISIS low level guy, notice that the same person is visiting a lot of such guys, you follow that person and they may lead you to a much more senior person (which is how they found several senior Al'quada people from memory, by basically following the couriers who had been spotted visiting known low level local leaders).
 
The Running Man said:
So tell me. Did the location of this training camp come to light since the attack on Paris? Or have we a list of targets but choose not to attack them?
Click to expand...

They'll have almost certainly known about it for a while, but it may have been too low a priority target.

At any one time the security and military intelligence services are probably aware of dozens, if not hundreds of "training camps"* around the world that terrorists use.

Of course knowing that there is a training camp, and having it as a worthwhile target are two separate things as they're not in use all the time and may only have one or two people in residence a lot of the time.
So you don't bomb it when it's empty or just got a couple of people there, you wait until either it's got a high enough priority person there (say a command level, or someone specifically wanted), or it's got a bunch of people there.



*Which can be little more than a few tents or small buildings, and very easily replaced.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom