United States unique capabilities

man.about.town · 20-03-2011 7:53am #1

while watching bbc news on the Libyan conflict, Obama and vice admiral William E Gortney said a number of times that the united states would offer its unique military capabilities? what are these unique capabilities?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12797728

ChunkyLover_53 · 20-03-2011 11:53am

I'll just leave this here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haarp#Conspiracy_theories

OS119 · 20-03-2011 12:05pm

man.about.town wrote: »

while watching bbc news on the Libyan conflict, Obama and vice admiral William E Gortney said a number of times that the united states would offer its unique military capabilities? what are these unique capabilities?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12797728

the US unique capabilities at kicking the door down and allowing other people to do the 'day-to-day' fighting.

so, for instance, the US can provide jamming systems that screw up radar and communications systems, provide dedicated combat search and rescue packages, it can add to the pool of AWACS aircraft, add to the pool of surveilance aircraft that can monitor what is happening on the ground, add to the pool of air-to-air refuelling tankers, and of course, through the sheer size of its Tommahawk cruise missile inventory, provide more big bangs.there are also daft things, like the F-15E Strike Eagles, which are almost certainly being used because the UK and France haven't got enough deep pentration weapons, and the internal aircraft systems on RAF Tornado's and French Mirage 2000's can't work with the US bombs.

now other forces, particularly the UK and France, have these capabilities, but they don't have enough of them to provide for the forces that don't - the RAF's Nimrod R1's are the equal of any US electronic warfare aircraft, but the RAF only has 2 of them. the RAF, France and NATO have AWACS aircraft, but only enough for their own forces, not to cater for those who don't have them - the same it true of Tankers and the transport aircraft needed to do the most basic, but fundamental, tasks like ensuring their are enough bombs at the Forward Operating Bases for the strike missions to take off.

the US has invested more in 'First day of War' capabilities, and it shows.

Captain Chaos · 20-03-2011 12:13pm

OS119 wrote: »

, and the internal aircraft systems on RAF Tornado's and French Mirage 2000's can't work with the US bombs.

Bang on post. The RAF and French fighter can use and do use, the RAF anway US laser guided bombs. It's the JDAMs that are not compatible.

The RAF do have the Storm Shadow cruise missiles that they used on the Tornado before, the French have the SCALP/APACHE variant for the Mirage 2000D and Rafale but I don't think it operational yet, at least on the Rafale.

The jamming and electronic warfare is the biggy though, the US mastered that in Gulf War 1. The UK only have very limited numbers of BGM-109s and the USN launched around 100 last night alone. The UK wouldn't even have that many in total.