General Trump hilarity free-for-all thread

[Junkenstein]

I'm seeing runway damage that amounts to potholes and a /single/ heavily damaged (but probably still functional after you clean up the worst of the mess) hangar surrounded by unblemished ones, runway damage released by the Russian govt and hangar by a Russian news reporter.

No source I'm reading says all the missiles hit. There's talk about them being accurate but no one's asserting they didn't miss /anyway/. No one's denying the Russian count. That's a curious little tidbit, to me.

I've seen the same pictures and it is indeed odd. Fair enough, Russia/Syria will be inclined to show pathetic pictures with minimal damage, but I'm not seeing any with massive infrastructure damage. It's worth noting that a fucking runway isn't the most complex of structures to rebuild. The loss of 9-13 planes is equally laughable. You've easily spent more than any damage caused.

What should be embarrassing the piss out of the US is not only did you apparently miss well over 50% of the time you fired, it's not clear where they landed as no obvious damage has been done. It implies that over half of what you fired were just duds. And wildly inaccurate duds at that.

I could do a hell of a lot of damage with 59,000 lbs of explosive. I'm familiar with MOD facilities over here and you could comfortably fuck one up beyond operational use for 6+months with a fraction of this amount. So either the Syrian facility is built to a standard far beyond the UK (not impossible) or any missiles fired are far less effective than what they're being marketed as.

[00.dusk]

There's also the alternative that someone put a clause in the mission plan that involved "casting a wide net" to catch "escaping targets" -- considering it /was/ internationally known it was going to happen before it actually did and all, that's a line that's plausible enough most people would buy it. It's also unrealistic because we're talking fucking cruise missiles, but I'm not sure reality entirely has a say in what happens around these parts anymore. This shit runs on soap opera drama rules.

Most airfields are surrounded by dickloads of nothing (for good reason). "Casting a wide net" will ensure the majority of them land ... nowhere and damage ... nothing and achieve ... fuck all. It'd be (arguably) a way to keep Assad and Putin happy while still appearing to do anything at all worth a damn.

The only other option I can think of is they explicitly toted out the ones so behind on maintenance that they were earmarked for return to the States and/or destroy in place, which requires the fucking operators to have been moles, which is unrealistic to the point of failing even soap opera drama rules. Cruise missiles historically have an effectiveness rate that is just about consistent with their rate of use (e.g. they rarely fail because they don't get used often enough to be able to afford failure -- iirc it's something like an avg success rate of 87% or thereabouts). The US military is a bit behind the pack, the Tomahawks run an 85% success rate, but that's still way better than what we were shown here. These would need to be a completely bad lot or, as stated, ones earmarked for destruction or total refurbishment if there were THAT many duds.

Being a military nerd has its moments at times like this.

[Junkenstein]

Cruise missiles historically have an effectiveness rate that is just about consistent with their rate of use (e.g. they rarely fail because they don't get used often enough to be able to afford failure -- iirc it's something like an avg success rate of 87% or thereabouts). The US military is a bit behind the pack, the Tomahawks run an 85% success rate, but that's still way better than what we were shown here. These would need to be a completely bad lot or, as stated, ones earmarked for destruction or total refurbishment if there were THAT many duds.

85% success rate? That seems a little high. And if you're right, which you may very well be, raises further questions about how many misses and lack of serious damage there has been. I would assume missiles needing maintenance/refurb would not get used at all as they represent a pretty significant risk to those firing them in the first place. "US sinks own ship due to dodgy missile" is a headline the military can't stand.

So what are the other reasonable options? Someone pulled a Schindler and has been selling the US bombs without the ability to go bang? Not likely, but can't rule it totally out these days.

[00.dusk]

Cruise missiles historically have an effectiveness rate that is just about consistent with their rate of use (e.g. they rarely fail because they don't get used often enough to be able to afford failure -- iirc it's something like an avg success rate of 87% or thereabouts). The US military is a bit behind the pack, the Tomahawks run an 85% success rate, but that's still way better than what we were shown here. These would need to be a completely bad lot or, as stated, ones earmarked for destruction or total refurbishment if there were THAT many duds.

85% success rate? That seems a little high. And if you're right, which you may very well be, raises further questions about how many misses and lack of serious damage there has been. I would assume missiles needing maintenance/refurb would not get used at all as they represent a pretty significant risk to those firing them in the first place. "US sinks own ship due to dodgy missile" is a headline the military can't stand.

So what are the other reasonable options? Someone pulled a Schindler and has been selling the US bombs without the ability to go bang? Not likely, but can't rule it totally out these days.

It's my understanding that "success rate" just means "explodes", so the misses aren't relevant to that number. Essentially, 85% of the time, a Tomahawk that is fired will blow up when it hits something. I could be wrong there, I haven't read up on them in quite some time, but I'm pretty sure the number is correct (a quick Google certainly says so).

It's also my understanding that "dodgy missiles" are safer for the one firing than it might seem. Something like, there must be a successful launch for the explosives to arm, and the explosives must arm to detonate. Those details are second hand, from military personnel I know, so I can't give you any sources on those, but it makes sense from a logistics perspective -- the launchers tend to hold multiple missiles, and a single failed missile would destroy them all, along with the launcher and anyone/anything near it. That's costs in personnel, labor, materiel and (usually) vehicles. You'd think that you'd just religiously keep the dodgy ones out of circulation, but they have (again, to my understanding) fairly short maintenance cycles and spend a lot of time attached to units that may not always be able to offload them for maintenance when needed, not to mention regular human failures (someone misses the date and signs off on it anyway, etc). Safer to make sure that they won't blow up the one firing them off.

[00.dusk]

https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/bgm-109.htm

In all, Tomahawks firing power shows a greater than 85% success rate

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/bgm-109-operation.htm

Same exact blocks of text. Probably from a book (Maybe one of the Jane's compendiums?) or a government report.

https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/tomahawk/

These missiles achieved an 85 percent success rate.

Citation from that site: "RGM/UGM-109 Tomahawk," in IHS Jane's Weapons: Strategic 2015-2016, ed. James C. O'Halloran (United Kingdom: IHS, 2015), 219-223. Seems like I was right. Jane's is a really, really good source for this sort of information.

[Junkenstein]

The more you know etc. , thanks!

[00.dusk]

No problem.

[Faust]

Today I learned to be scared of 00.dusk

[P3nT4gR4m]

Today I learned not to be scared of american cruise missiles 

*eta: Does this mean there are now a couple of dozen top secret missile guidance systems currently just lying around in the syrian desert?

[Cain]

Also, gonna go get a hair shirt to wear as penance for doubting Cain, who called this shit like an hour before it happened.

It's what I (don't) get paid the big bucks for.

The missile failure rate is interesting.  Lots of people are (correctly) pointing out that this was a very Wag the Dog moment - US policy towards Syria is apparently unchanged, Russia was informed before the strike (and undoubtedly passed that info onto Syria) etc.  It's also unclear what intelligence led to this base itself being struck - the White House claims it is where the chemical attack originated, but what agency made that determination, how was it made and how credible is that assessment (just last week, Trump was asking for raw intel.  Did a White House off the books "intel team" pick the target, or was it a "legit" intel agency).

And on top of that, it's Syria, so everyone has every reason to lie.  Trump, the Russians, the Assad govt, the rebels...it's going to be a shitshow of claims and counterclaims and disinfo. 

[00.dusk]

Also, gonna go get a hair shirt to wear as penance for doubting Cain, who called this shit like an hour before it happened.

It's what I (don't) get paid the big bucks for.

The missile failure rate is interesting.  Lots of people are (correctly) pointing out that this was a very Wag the Dog moment - US policy towards Syria is apparently unchanged, Russia was informed before the strike (and undoubtedly passed that info onto Syria) etc.  It's also unclear what intelligence led to this base itself being struck - the White House claims it is where the chemical attack originated, but what agency made that determination, how was it made and how credible is that assessment (just last week, Trump was asking for raw intel.  Did a White House off the books "intel team" pick the target, or was it a "legit" intel agency).

And on top of that, it's Syria, so everyone has every reason to lie.  Trump, the Russians, the Assad govt, the rebels...it's going to be a shitshow of claims and counterclaims and disinfo.

The articles I've been reading say the information was confirmed by the Syrian resistance. I'd assume that the smart move here would be to say "well they told us and they're /right there watching it/ so who are we to say they lied?"

[Cain]

About the missile strike rate?  Or that the base was the one used in the chemical attack?

[00.dusk]

About the missile strike rate?  Or that the base was the one used in the chemical attack?

The base. The missile strike rate was confirmed primarily by photos and video showing a laughably small amount of real damage (including two areas that looked like someone tossed a hand grenade down and literally pushed the shrapnel away with a broom after the smoke cleared... the concrete was scorched and had a chip mark or two FFS) and the Russian government.

Today I learned not to be scared of american cruise missiles 

*eta: Does this mean there are now a couple of dozen top secret missile guidance systems currently just lying around in the syrian desert?

Probably not. I'm not entirely clear on how it all works, but cruise missiles tend to have impact sensors and a failsafe detonator that will slag the (computer) hardware on impact if it has the chance (e.g. in the event of a dud missile). I don't know if that's the case for the Tomahawks though. Either way, Russian cruise missiles are better in this case, and the Tomahawks can't be misdirected or jammed or whatever due to how their guidance systems function (wholly internal) so getting the hardware gets them nothing much.

[Cain]

Ah, OK.  I was more referring to the intelligence angle, truth be told, when I was talking about the lying, though the oddness there could somehow link in with the greater oddness about the targeting in the first place.  There's an obvious explanation (Trump and Putin and Assad putting on a show) but I try to avoid the obvious explanations without something in the way of hard evidence to back it up.

If there wasn't photographic evidence, I'd also be interested to see which rebel group it was, because the rebels there are pretty ideologically split and not at all a united front.  The SDF is a creature of Turkey, Russia backs certain militias too, you have pro-US rebels, pro-Islamist rebels, pro-Islamist rebels funded by US allies...it's a complete nightmare, and one reason, despite desperately wishing for an end to the violence in Syria, I'm skeptical about intervention leading to lasting results. 

[Junkenstein]

Good point about Syria being informed. Implies any gear/people there were of no/low value to them and left as a sacrifice. Give it a week and we'll find out the 3/9/16 planes weren't even operational.