Using neutron bombs on taliban safehavens

Ziggurat said:
Oh, they're quite real. They've just been decomissioned, and they were never quite the weapon some apparently imagine them to be.
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That was pretty much what I thought, they are not the 'kills but does not destroy' super weapons.

To quote the OP "And the beauty of neutron bombs is that their is no blast damage and very little residual radiation."
 
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There is still no way that using a neutron bomb, if we had one ready, would not kill innocent by-standers and recruit more terrorists.

There is no way that it would NOT turn the rest of the world agaisnt us.

It might encourage Pakistan and India to nuke each other the next time things get hot in Kashmir. TRhey think of their nukes now as just really powerful artillery. Not an attitude we want to encourage, right?

During the campaign, Obama raised the point that calling in air strikes alone is not going to do the job. He pointed out that it killed a lot of civilians and enhanced the world's view of us as war criminals.

And the righties went nuts over it, and started whiniong that he had called our troops murderers.

Even to do surgical strikes, we need more boots on the ground. Just to get the kind of intel we need requires more personnel.

I would hope that Obama is making at least some effort to get more cooperation with Pakistan to get our troops operating on both sides of the border. That would make more sense.

As for the historical use of air power to control anm enemy, may I remind you that, when the Shrub wanted to invade Iraq, the left was pointing out that it was too like Hitler's decision to invade Russia without taking out England.

His strategic thinking was the same there.

Get the oil. Use air power to take out that enemy logistical and training facility on the flank. The locals will help us secure the oil fields.

How did that work?
 
WildCat said:
If I understand them correctly, they can kill everyone inside a cave/bunker (because the explosion uses up all the oxygen) but don't actually destroy it nor the materiel inside?
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You misunderstand what it means when military literature state that FAEs destroy soft targets.

Tanks are soft targets. You and I would probably not colloquially refer to them as 'soft' but by the definition of large-scale explosives, they are.

Hardened targets are specifically designed to be resistant to different levels of explosive damage, and FAEs are not good at reliably destroying, or even significantly damaging, hardened targets.
 
Yes, nuke Afghanistan, killing lots and lots of people will surely win the hearts and minds of people all around the world.

Terrorism will magically dissapear and Afghanistan will instantly transform into a utopian paradise.
 
leftysergeant said:
Would you care to address the strategic thinking to see wether there is a historic precedent on which to base an assessment?
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You presented no "strategic thinking", only a confused comparison between two things which really aren't equivalent at all and are irrelevant to the OP anyways. And nobody except tumbleweed thinks the idea of using neutron bombs in Afghanistan has any merit, and for all I know even he has changed his mind. There was no reason to Upchurch the thread.
 
Actually, it was an attempt to point out the stupidity of using airpower and superweapons as a substitute for stratedic competence.
 
leftysergeant said:
There is still no way that using a neutron bomb, if we had one ready, would not kill innocent by-standers
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Probably true, depending on how you define innocent
and recruit more terrorists.
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You can't recruit dead people. That appears to have been the OP's point, or a side point.

Actually, it was an attempt to point out the stupidity of using airpower and superweapons as a substitute for stratedic competence.
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Attempt to pillory the thread is noted. :D PS, what superweapon did Bush use, again?


DR
 
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GreyICE said:
You misunderstand what it means when military literature state that FAEs destroy soft targets.

Tanks are soft targets. You and I would probably not colloquially refer to them as 'soft' but by the definition of large-scale explosives, they are.

Hardened targets are specifically designed to be resistant to different levels of explosive damage, and FAEs are not good at reliably destroying, or even significantly damaging, hardened targets.
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It's not the targets you destroy with an FAE, it is the soft and chewy center inside the target. However, there are ways to deflect/reduce/mitigate the effects of an FAE, depending on how you build your bunker complex.

DR
 
I thought so that my previous post was "out of topic" in this thread.

:eusa_naughty:
 
If it was possible to win wars solely with air-power then the USA would have won in Vietnam.

Steve
 
R.Mackey said:
I recall Paul Harvey talking about the "life-saver bomb" in the early days of the Gulf War, when the opposition still expected tens of thousands of UN casualties during the ground phase. It was ridiculous then and it's even more ridiculous now.

There is a faction in the ultra-right that is seeking to rehabilitate the image of nuclear weapons, to make them more palatable for tactical use on the battlefield. This is gradualism at its worst. Either there is a class of weapons that is so horrible their use is unforgivable, or there isn't, and we should expect to have them used on us someday.
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But it makes great arguments for why we shouldn't care if Iran get them.
 
oggiesnr said:
If it was possible to win wars solely with air-power then the USA would have won in Vietnam.

Steve
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According to several N. Vietnamese military officials we may well have if we had actually tried. But McNamara screwed it up badly, Rolling Thunder was a complete joke. The N. Vietnamese were astonished that we would constantly let up and allow them to rebuild their defenses and bomb already-destroyed targets when fresh ones were there for the taking.
 
Any kind of a nuclear explosion will produce radioactive fallout, some of which will end up carried by the wind over Pakistan and some other neutral countries in the area. The neutron burst will also convert other harmless materials into radioactive isotopes of something else. So basically a lot of the dust kicked up by the shockwave, will come down as radioactive dust, and contaminate a hideously wide area for many years.

I dare say that's not quite the way to win hearts and minds, and that's putting it very mildly.

The comparison to WW2 japan is... misguided and misleading at best too.

For a start, Japan was the surrender of a nation's government, when it became clear that they're definitely not going to win any more. I'm not aware of any such centralized structure in the case of the Taliban and generally islamic fundamentalists.

Even in Japan not everyone wanted to surrender. There was just one group who wanted to surrender, and that was pretty much the Emperor and his gang at the top. Lots of soldiers and officers actually committed suicide because they didn't want to surrender and weren't allowed to fight on, once the Emperor had ordered them otherwise. In the case of the islamists you have exactly such a group which wants to fight on, and no Emperor to tell them to step down. What makes you think it's the same situation?

And even so, many of those who could get into an airplane, went and flew it into the nearest American target, even against the Emperor's orders. (Or, more realistically into an American FLAK barrage.) Are you sure you'd want to cause the same wave of suicide bombers among islamists?

Second, it wasn't the atomic bombs in isolation. Japan was already taking a severe beating, and it was becoming clear for said Japanese leadership that they're simply not going to achieve their goals any more. Japan was already being bombed on its home soil daily, the Americans were getting into amphibious landing range, the Russians were already blitzing through Manchuria, etc. Japan could only delay the inevitable, and only take even more damage in the process. The atomic bombs were just the final proof of how badly they're outgunned and losing.

I don't think we have the fundamentalists backed in that kind of a corner, by any reckoning.

Japan's leadership had everything to lose from actions that sunk the population's morale any lower. The islamists have everything to gain from actions that paint the USA and generally the West even more as bloodthirsty mass-murderers.

Etc.

All things considered, I vote this as the dumbest idea of the decade, easily besting even everything Dubya ever said. Here's your sign.
 
Let me tell you what is sick. Logic dictates that if we continue on the same course in Afghanistan, we will be forced to cut and run just like the Russians did. THEN the Taliban -you know those daring dashing bold guerrillas who toss acid into 10 year old schoolgirl's faces and want to impose a Dark Age Theocracy on the entire frigging world- will take over Afghanistan. THEN Al Qaeda has a safe haven from which to launch more 911s and possibly even nukes on our cities. THAT'S a fact jack.
And I say we need to follow the EXACT same strategy that worked on Japan. You FORCE them into unconditional surrender using those "magical" air weapons. And as far as the act of frying safe havens causing "resentment" let's ask the damned Japanese themselves about it- " Hey guys, you still pissed at us" Or are you GREATFUL that we brought you out a 1000 year old might makes right warrior culture. So you let the ruthless Taliban know that you are wiling to out do them in ruthless and the plan is to eradicate them and completely dismantle their culture - again just like the Japanese- if necessary by whatever means available. Meanwhile in areas that we DO control, we d o exactly what MacArthur did in Tokyo. And screw that corrupt Karzai and his protestations. THAT is how you win the damned war over there. You either view it as necessary or you play damned politics with it. And neutron bombs involve no combat troops and are cheap
 
Tumbleweed said:
Let me tell you what is sick. Logic dictates that if we continue on the same course in Afghanistan, we will be forced to cut and run just like the Russians did. THEN the Taliban -you know those daring dashing bold guerrillas who toss acid into 10 year old schoolgirl's faces and want to impose a Dark Age Theocracy on the entire frigging world- will take over Afghanistan. THEN Al Qaeda has a safe haven from which to launch more 911s and possibly even nukes on our cities. THAT'S a fact jack.
And I say we need to follow the EXACT same strategy that worked on Japan. You FORCE them into unconditional surrender using those "magical" air weapons. And as far as the act of frying safe havens causing "resentment" let's ask the damned Japanese themselves about it- " Hey guys, you still pissed at us" Or are you GREATFUL that we brought you out a 1000 year old might makes right warrior culture. So you let the ruthless Taliban know that you are wiling to out do them in ruthless and the plan is to eradicate them and completely dismantle their culture - again just like the Japanese- if necessary by whatever means available. Meanwhile in areas that we DO control, we d o exactly what MacArthur did in Tokyo. And screw that corrupt Karzai and his protestations. THAT is how you win the damned war over there. You either view it as necessary or you play damned politics with it. And neutron bombs involve no combat troops and are cheap
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We see here that the Silver Bullet theory is alive and well. *sigh* Tumbleweed, I realize it is tempting apply a cookie cutter solution from one problem to another, but this is an omelette, not batch of cookies.

The Taliban have less to lose, for example, than the Japanese did when they were finally convinced to quit after the nukes fell. I don't think the Taliban are even close to on the ropes, isolated, and following a steady stream of losing the way the Japanese were when the two nukes were used. Also, they are not a nation state, they are a political faction whose location is varied, fluid, and integrated into at least two nations states.

In other words, they aren't the same class of target as Japan in 1945.

Those are a smattering of reasons why your idea to nuke them until they quit is a crapola-with-walnuts-and-whipped-cream-on-top strategy. There are more, but I'll leave them to others.

DR
 
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