News reports say that France bombed an air strip in Sabha. Sabha is about 250 miles inland – that puts them outside the range of AWACS unless the AWACS have started flying over Libyan air space. The air base in Sabha has (had?) a squadron of MIG25s. The MIG25 can do over Mach 2 and is somewhat comparable to the F15. When the Soviet Union broke up, they were sold off to member states and allies. Most of them have been taken out of service, but they linger on in a few places.
Sabha is in the middle of the country Eastern end a large sandy portion of the Sahara desert.
Sabha was the location of Guadafi’s nuclear weapons program, and also where they experimented with making rockets in the 1980s. There are no “civlians” here that France is protecting from attack.
Are you implying there is some other reason for this “kinetic” war on Khaddafi?
Wait, I get it – since they WERE working on nuclear bombs in the 80s here, we had to bomb the sites to keep them from getting nukes, right?
And Iran is next on the list, right?