So you’re the weapons officer from the F15E that crashes near Benghazi. A Libyan with a machine gun runs up to you. Do you trust him or do you shoot first and ask questions later?
The Pilot went with the Rebels who immediately turned him over to American forces (Inside Benghazi?”)
The Weapons Officer called for a rescue mission which involved a V22 V/STOL Osprey (average cost about $250 million/copy) launched from a carrier and a helicopter. In the process of recovering the weapons officer, 6 rebels were “injured”.
My enemy’s enemy is my friend. Pretty original, ain’t it?
The pilot did well. There is no way to determine in a Muslim country friend or foe. Although I suspect the “rebels” are our temporary friends until the hardliners take over, then their true colors will show.
Reuters is now reporting the U.S. military went back and bombed the wreckage of the plane. Perhaps they don’t want China to get a copy of the avionics and weapon control systems, or something.
“The Pilot went with the Rebels who immediately turned him over to American forces (Inside Benghazi?”).”
Of course there are American boots on the ground because Barry Osama said there weren’t any.
“In the process of recovering the weapons officer, 6 rebels were “injured”.
“There is no way to determine in a Muslim country friend or foe.”
Has anyone defined who the “rebels” (not usually a term associated with our side, as in Afganistan) REALLY ARE?
“Reuters is now reporting the U.S. military went back and bombed the wreckage of the plane.”
A lot was made of the cost of the missles we already shot off, but no one seems to be factoring in or reporting the cost of this jet into the total.
As many of my ex-military friends have said about this Libya action: “This is a cluster”.
Well, the way governments think – that jet is “spent money”. It’s not part of this year’s appropropriation, so it doesn’t cost anything that it crashed. In 20 years, it would be scrapped anyhow or sent to a museum. It may speed up the need for more F-35s, however.
I also alluded to another example of “military math”. The Osprey project cost $27 billion over its life, and generated a few more than 100 planes – meaning that each plane produced cost the taxpayers about $250 million. If you had wanted to create one more of them, you could have done so for $67 million, since the factory is already built and all the design and testing is completed…. so if one crashes, the “cost” is only $67 million – the replacement cost.
I expect no agreement on this, but this debt problem is only going to be solved with very deep cuts in military spending, and all that means to our role in the world. We won’t be the ones rushing to Somalia to shoot at pirates…
The only other option is to declare war on most of the laws that are preventing us from growing our GDP – pollution laws, class action lawsuits, OSHA, limits on oil, gas and coal development, NIMBY anti-development groups, regional planning authorities, water management authorities, environomental impact reviews, endangered species protection acts, etc… I don’t see any consensus yet on that.
According to Wikipedia. That F-15E was, at the very least, a $31 million dollar piece of flying machinery (based on 1998 figures). But hey, who’s counting? After all we have a booming economy and no budget deficit to worry about, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-15E