Stardate 20011016.1355 (On Screen via long range sensors): Global Security has released a series of highlighted Ikonos satellite photos taken in 1999 which show examples of the Afghan cave complexes which we have recently been bombing. Of course, military satellites will produce much better images than these, so it's rather astounding how obvious these are even with civilian satellite technology. Whoever made them doesn't appear to have made any effort to try to hide them; it appears that the goal was defense rather than subterfuge. (I mean, when a bulldozed-road runs right up to a rimmed black hole in the ground and then stops, it's not too difficult to figure out what it is.) In fact, complexes like these would be proof against saturation bombing with conventional high explosives. The assumption is that it didn't occur to them that potential enemies had the ability to actually cause caves to collapse (with weapons such as
the
GBU-28; these caves are actually quite vulnerable to the kinds of weapons we are deploying. Also, these are capital-intense installations to produce; it's much more expensive and difficult to create a cave than to build an out-door camp. It seems unlikely that they have a huge number of these. I wonder how many of them are left? (Speaking of which, has anyone noticed that there's been no word directly from Mullah Omar for a few days?)
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