USS Clueless              Voyages of a restless mind

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Stardate 20011008.1254 (On Screen): As such things go, the air assault against Afghanistan is actually pretty light. To hit an entire nation, even one as primitive as Afghanistan, with only 25 jets at a time isn't much. This reports that in one particular attack, there seem to have been three bombs hitting the Kabul area. That's hardly anything. (One B-52 can carry 70,000 pounds of bombs. That's about fifty bombs the size of a Tomahawk warhead.) While I have no doubt that there are strategic reasons for all the targets which are being hit, I have to wonder whether this may be more of a political effort than a military one. When we were really start trying to soften them up for a major ground offensive, we'll be hitting them a lot harder than we are.

Of course, with only three weeks to mobilize, this may be all we are capable of doing. It takes a while to get supplies flowing; you have to prime a ship-based pipeline of fuel and spare parts and ordnance. (You have to figure between one and two hundred tons of cargo per sortie by a heavy bomber.) Another limiting factor may be jet tankers for mid-air refueling. One possible outline for the upcoming war is that we continue bombing with gradually rising intensity for a while (a few weeks), and hope that the Northern Alliance can defeat the Taliban or that the Taliban will crumble and abdicate; then we engage in diplomacy and nation building afterwards. If that fails, then we would build up both air and ground assets in the area and come spring begin a much more intensive air assault in preparation for a real ground attack by multiple divisions and/or special forces.

For the moment we're concentrating on capital assets: guns, jets, radars, control centers, supply dumps, Mullah Omar's estate in Kandahar (heh). They're trying to destroy strategic assets, as well as to gain air supremacy. That can be done with a minimum of casualties on both sides. A transition to watch for will be when the bombing switches emphasis to human assets, i.e. Taliban troop formations. Casualties (on their side) will stairstep when that happens. Initially the point of it will be to try to break the morale of Taliban forces. But if we're really serious about it (trying to kill rather than trying to frighten) we'll be carpet-bombing, and then it's going to get really ugly. This is most likely to first happen just north of Kabul, to weaken the forces which are preventing the Northern Alliance from taking Kabul. If Kabul falls, that may cause the Taliban's support to crumble and end this phase of the war. There's good reason to believe that their grip is loosening already. (discuss)

Update: Actually, it was only fifteen jets, not twenty five. Five were heavy bombers, the other ten were F/A-18 Hornets flying from our carriers. And they only launched fifteen Tomahawks. This is not what you'd call a massive attack.

Update 20011009: Another possibility for how few jets have been used is that there simply isn't all that much in the way of capital assets to attack.