Armed drone strike(s) would be effective against a large group of armed ISIS fighters on parade because, well, parade.
Yes, the U.S. military was not actually issued orders specifically to destroy all groups of Huns or Nazis. Individuals were targeted, cities and towns were targeted, airfields, ships, battle groups, ports, dams, railroads, armies, manufacturing plants, defensive positions, bunkers, etc…
ISIS is getting stronger, and more established. And they certainly don’t appear to be getting any friendlier.
The thread question is, “How is Islamic State managing to survive under constant US airfire?” The fact is, ISIS hasn’t been under constant U.S. “airfire”. If it had been, I doubt ISIS would have done as well as it has.
Aside from the Tattoo calling out “Da Plane” to boom issue that’s gone down the rabbit hole…
This really is a matter of the lead time to get the plan there more than a matter of how long engagement takes once the plane is on site with clearance. Did anyone even that column was there before it dispersed? Clearance of fires is going to be difficult in a messy environment where Iraqi militias look an awful lot like that IS column. We haven’t heard of any strikes against Iraqi security forces so we’re obviously being careful.
We’re not flying all that much either. I found some good data since my last post (cite). 2,242 strikes into Iraq in 283 days (with another 1422 in Syria). That’s about 8 a day. The top month was around 400. That’s less than three days of the air campagin for Desert Storm in the most intensive month. It’s not much past the opening night of Desert Storm for the whole campaign.
Here’s another cite that’s older but has some interesting pieces about the challenges of identifying targets in the given environment. There’s a challenge in comparing the numbers to the BBC story above since this cite covers total sorties and weapons used. That’s different than the number of targets struck. The ISR sorties number is telling for our case though - 1700 in about 5 month. That’s around 11 ISR flights a day to locate targets. That’s not a lot of eyes up to pick up targets. As of Jan CENTCOM had been using 6-10 times more ISR in support of retrograde operations in Afghanistan. IS has not been the focus for collection assets. We also haven’t embedded advisers with the units on the ground that could assist with targeting. The inability to locate targets limits the ability to use the assets available.
That requires knowing that the parade is happening with enough advanced notice to get drones there, knowing where the parade is, and knowing whether the parade is military or not.
Daesh isn’t strong enough to win the three-way civil war against Assad’s government in Syria and the other rebels - but it is strong enough to push into Sunni areas suspicious of Iraq’s central government - run by the Iraqi Shia majority.
Neither the United States nor Iran cares enough about Daesh to devote overwhelming force to stop it, but they do care enough to give the Iraqis a trickle of assistance to keep Daesh from winning in Baghdad, for example.
While true, this doesn’t prevent people from thinking that if Daesh attempts to hold a parade, it should have fighter jets show up like in the movies Man of Steel or Cloverfield. People ignore the scale of the conflict in Syria and Iraq, and imagine that the relatively small contingent of U.S. and other nations’ aircraft should have a huge impact on the war. This is a war that stretches about 400 miles from the coast of Syria into central Iraq, and 250 miles from the Turkish border into southern Syria and central Iraq. The areas of Syria and Iraq that Daesh operates in contained about 14,000,000 people pre-war (a number of whom have definitely become refugees since.) A hundred aircraft simply isn’t a big number compared to the areas and people involved in this war.
I strongly suspect the U.S. and other goverments have decided to let this group become more concentrated and then attempt a knock out punch, the propaganda following a huge defeat of Isis could play out in some unpredictable ways.
Japan and Germany had both been subjected to massive bombing attacks previously, and it didn’t make them surrender. It was only total destruction of two cities that caused Japan to surrender after extreme losses earlier.
I’m not saying you can’t achieve a lot with just bombing, however I must insist your example is completely invalid to your point in one of the worst possible ways. There were in fact millions of US boots on the ground in many many of the Japanese held territories. While true, Japan surrendered after two (atomic) bombings, there was also many more firebombings and an extremely credible threat of millions of boots invading very soon. Not to mention after Russia finished with Germany, there was millions of Russian boots on the ground in Japanese held Manchuria right after the 2 bombings as well.
The atomic bombings being The Reason for Japanese surrender is a dubious claim. Certainly it played a part, but there were so many other reasons involved beside. Namely, boots on the ground.
We’re only talking about a single tactic. It only requires a suspicion that ISIS would have a parade after taking Ramadi. A waiting satellite, or drone, could provide real-time proof that armed ISIS fighters were present. It would be the last parade ISIS held in public.
The only boots on the ground, on the main island of Japan, prior to Aug 6th and 9th, 1945 were Imperial Japanese boots. On August 15, 1945, Imperial Japan surrendered.
A satellite in a stable low Earth orbit is moving at around 17,550 mph relative to the surface of the Earth. Reconnaissance satellites need to be in the lowest stable orbits so they can get good images, and the lower the orbit, the faster the speed.
A much better change would be if you get a reconnaissance aircraft over Ramadi to see when the parade starts. But if you don’t know when the parade starts, or even if there will be a parade, how do you know when to put the reconnaissance aircraft there? How many hours or how many days after Daesh declared itself in control of Ramadi did the parade take place?
Most of the air strikes in Daesh territory have focused on targets that don’t move - positions, buildings, staging areas, oil infrastructure. There’s probably a reason for that.
What are the benefits of hitting parades, and what are the potential risks? Is there a higher chance of civilian casualties or loss of aircraft and crew?
You are correct. I was not trying to say there was an invasion by allied forces on mainland Japan prior to their surrender. I’m saying there were many millions of allied boots on the ground in an ever tightening circle. To say that the two atomic bombs caused the surrender would be to diminish the years of effort and sacrifice by the allied forces’ boots on the many miles of ground to allow said bombs to even have a chance to be dropped.
To restate: I agree much can be accomplished with just bombing, however using the atomic bombings of Japan as an example is not a good argument to support that statement.
Orbiting satellites orbit. They move in a circular path around the Earth. Geostationary satellites hold their position (but may need occasional repositioning). At 22,300 miles above the equator, the force of gravity is cancelled by the centrifugal force of the rotating universe.
We’re talking about reconnaissance. How that reconnaissance is accomplished makes for an interesting discussion, but the point is for reconnaissance to be conducted in order to better understand the enemies position, and preparations. Assuming orders had been issued to the U.S. military to engage and destroy ISIS on a much larger scale than they’re currently operating under, the extermination of a large group of ISIS fighters in the safety of their conquered territory would have the same effect as the Doolittle raid on Tokyo.
If it were suspected that a large number of ISIS fighters might be planning to hold a parade, a rally, or a Tupperware party, it’s best to begin having eyes-in-the-sky, or ears on the ground (not figuratively), before the event takes place.
Nonsense. All satellites orbit, in an elliptical path. The reason geosynchronous satellites appear to hover over a single spot is because at an altitude of 22,300 miles, their orbital period exactly matches the rotation period of the Earth, 24 hours. If the Earth rotated more slowly, geosynch would be further out, more quickly, it would be closer in.
And geosync satellites make terrible recon satellites, because they’re so high.
Military satellites would be the satellite of choice for viewing Ramadi parades.
But what is significant about the altitude of 22,300 miles? There are two forces that hold geostationary satellites in position. Newton’s 2nd law of motion, and gravity, (plus the thrusters for station-keeping).
*Derivation of geostationary altitude
In any circular orbit, the centripetal acceleration required to maintain the orbit is provided by the gravitational force on the satellite. To calculate the geostationary orbit altitude, one begins with this equivalence, and uses the fact that the orbital period is one sidereal day.
(math stuff)
By Newton’s second law of motion, we can replace the forces F with the mass m of the object multiplied by the acceleration felt by the object due to that force:
(math stuff)
Blah, blah, blah…
…The resulting orbital radius is 42,164 kilometres (26,199 mi). Subtracting the Earth’s equatorial radius, 6,378 kilometres (3,963 mi), gives the altitude of 35,786 kilometres (22,236 mi). Orbital speed (how fast the satellite is moving through space) is calculated by multiplying the angular speed by the orbital radius: *
These forces keep the geostationary satellites in the Clarke Orbit.
The theoretical basis for this novel phenomenon of the sky goes back to Newton’s theory of motion and gravity. In that theory, the existence of a geostationary satellite is made possible because the Earth rotates (with respect to an inertial frame in which Newton’s laws of motion and gravity hold). However, as a practical device, the geostationary satellite owes much for its realisation to Arthur C. Clarke who proposed it during the 20th century and in whose honour the orbit is called a Clarke orbit. Such orbits are useful for telecommunications satellites.
Improved Crystal is supposedly the name for the improved KH-11 satellites that are used by the U.S. for real-time, fine resolution optical reconnaissance. I’ve read that the optical resolution for that satellite is in the ballpark of 100 mm (1995 Russian article and 2007 Global Security article, from a minimum viewing distance of 150 km (Astronautix listing for their perigee) to 270 km (Global Security article). Let’s use the bigger figure, while keeping in mind that we’re probably off by a factor of three either way. Geostationary orbits are roughly 35,800 km above sea level. Assuming it’s a linear relationship, we’d expect resolution to degrade by (35,800/270) or 132 times, resulting in an expected resolution of 13.2 meters. Which isn’t all that bad, really.
This is an image from a NASA excerpt of a book on using satellites for mapping. Per the link it has a ground resolution of 48 feet in the original image, and in it,
Could you get meaningful BDA from images with 40 foot resolution?
Given the lack of relative motion from a geostationary viewing point (which is definitely not the case at the altitudes where typical spy satellites operate), I wonder if you could improve resolution by using interferometry? I.e., stick two mirrors at opposite ends of a ginormous stationary boom on the satellite, combine their images, and see if resolution improves.
Alternately, what prevents the use of two satellites simultaneously imaging the target from different places, synchronizing their imagery, and combining both sets of images? Would that improve resolution? Would we need to know exactly where both satellites were? Could that be done via passive means like GPS, or would the satellites have to bounce a laser off each other?
Different satellites for different purposes. A telecommunications satellite stationed in Clarke Orbit wouldn’t be taking pictures of the Earth or stars. Stereo imageging satellites would be used to take pictures and make 3D images. I have no idea what the range, or overall capabilities, of military satellites are.
IKONOS Stereo Satellite Imagery
Reference stereo products have a horizontal accuracy of 25 meters CE90 and a vertical accuracy of 22 meters LE90 without any Ground Control Points (GCP’s). When reliable GPS derived GCP photo ID control is available for the area to be collected the horizontal and vertical Geospatial accuracy increases to <2.5m horizontal and <1.5m vertical.
I would think that Geospatial accuracy of <2.5m horizontal and <1.5m vertical would spot any armed fighters holding down the Snoopy and Popeye balloons on parade in Ramadi.
1.5m resolution is 5 feet. So an armed fighter would represent a single pixel on your image. How can that be used to identify if he’s a fighter, farmer, or wheel barrow?
If your looking down at a man from space, you are only going to see him as viewed from above (obviously). A human cross section would need significantly higher resolution than 2.5 meters.
Also the satellite in your link orbits at 600km. So there would be no guarantee that it would be over the middle east at the time of the parade. The Geosynchronous satellite could be guaranteed to be there, but it is 60x higher in altitude, with a corresponding drop in image quality.
So the satellites that can see the parade, aren’t always on station. The satellites that are always on station wouldn’t be able to see it.
Even if a geosync could resolve individual fighters and vehicles, how do you know to point it at Ramadi and not any of the other hundreds of cities present?
First off, it’s not “my” image. 2nd, you would be looking for a parade, or massed celebration. 3rd, the U.S. military (that would include the Air Force, Navy, Marines, and Army) has not been issued orders to destroy massed groups of ISIS fighters within cities.
So, still speaking hypothetically, “IF” the U.S. military had received orders to engage large groups of armed ISIS fighters inside Ramadi, it can be assumed they would have relied on one, or more, forms of reconnaissance before engaging the enemy.
Why Ramadi? You start with the assumption that ISIS would have a parade/celebration in Ramadi after they took the city. Internet chatter might suggest that there would be a parade/celebration in Ramadi. The targeted area would then be Ramadi.
