And so it begins..

Moriarty

Theres been reports of 3 large flashes in the sky north of Kabul. Blair & GWB are making emergency announcements shortly. Here we go folks.....

Fidelis

"An eye for an eye leaves us all blind"

Belisarius

Well put , Watching CNN you can already see them trying to hype up the Afghan air defence , grudgingly accepting its less sophisticated than the Serbian/Iraqi systems ..They wont just admit that Afghan Air defence is an AK 47 pointed upwards , ah well folks scrap the telly schedule for the next week or so , its war

Hobbes

Afgan air defense is a bit better then an AK47. Still prehistoric though to what the US has.

I'm more worried about the counter-attack. Remember the terrorists aren't sitting in Afganistan.

Belisarius

I know I know , just ignore my weak attempt at humour but I till doubt it would be in anyway effective against Warplanes all the same . Too right about the terrorists however , Theyres a chance itll force thier hand to try to get the us to back off , the idea of course is a bit far fetched ,but so was the WTC then again .

Itll be intresting to see what scale this is on , if its an Independent sortie or a cohesive attack , either way well be looking a blurry green image of Afghanistan for the next few days like I said on IRC
"<Bel-watchinfuzz> Its like those cheesy postcards you get sent from scanger holes in Spain "Kabul by nightime" , except it just a black screen , or green as the case may now be "

Fidelis

The UK reported that one of it's cruise missile submarines were contributing to the assault on Afghanistan.

The different news stations seemed be to frantically grabbing defense analysts, SkyNews was left with a bit of a tít, while bbc got Paul Beaver, SkyNews normally have that guy Francis something or other, he l33t.

Anyway, he was trying to explain to the news presenters on skynews that the Afghani air defence was utterly hopeless but before he could finish, they were cutting him off and trying to discount him by saying that they still actually had some form of air defence, all technicalities in reality.

No one can be really sure of what they actaully have, best guesses are that they might have some of the old Soviet hardware, not great, but would still do the trick I'm sure, then again they'd have no way of obtaining parts or proper training.

Their airforce has also been overrated, attacking airfields ? Give me a break, they have some ground attack aircraft that wouldn't even have the capabilities to take down any F-15's/F-16's/F-14's.

In all, there is no need for any form of air defence suppression unlike in Iraq where Saddam actually does have the capabilities to down an allied aircraft. They might aswell go into Afghanistan with bulldozers and knock down the power stations for all the good it will do.

Hobbes

Well the "food drops" sounds like total spin.

One of them said they were dropping without parachutes, another said they were high altitude dropping the food.

So how the heck can they drop the food without it being destroyed?

Even if they manage to drop it safely I would hate to be under it when it landed.

Another said that they had started dropping food when 10 minutes later another guy said the planes hadn't even taken off from Germany yet.