Against WWII installations, not anything meant to stand up to modern weapons.
That’s why we have the GBU-37. It’s a modern bomb.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/gam.htm
And you don’t think the Iranians know about it, and have hardened their facilities enough to stand up against it ? Unless they are morons, they have been assuming we or the Israelis might attack them at any time.
While you can harden against a direct hit, the point of earthquake bombs is that you don’t need a direct hit: they cause damage by causing a localised earthquake, sending shockwaves through the whole structure and it’s the shockwaves that cause the damage.
More to the point, the fact that you know about something doesn’t mean you can defend against it. Not in the least. There are limits to how deeply your engineering and technical base can out a workable facility, and I’m not at al sure the Iranians have that level. They are not an unsophisticated people, but their revolution hurt their technical awareness and ability to apply it. And a big enough punch will take out anything.
When hitting a hardened facility, add more bombs.
Or, you know, the pyroclastic flow bombs. Either way. Not that I’m really up for bombing Iran at all, but I remain reasonably sure that, if the US wants to destroy a known target location, it can pretty much pound it into a crater. A deep crater. We are good at that.
Yes I totally agree ,many if not most Iranians are pretty secular and they are frightened and opressed by the current Iranian regime.
The bad guys in our eyes are the Republican Guard ,they’re the ones who act like loonies but they also mostly run the country.
As a Brit I could never understand why Republican Irish could almost kill our government (The Brighton Bombing),murder our mainland women ,children and old people and not say take the gloves off ,kill these cunts but we never did ,we sent in the S.A.S. only when the atrocitys were considered inhuman but we won.
Maybe we bored them to death.
It’ll drift to Afghanistan and take out the poppy fields!
And who would you have killed ? The guys with “FORCES OF EVIL” stamped on their foreheads ?
As we are busy proving in Iraq, “kill 'em all” doesn’t work when the enemy doesn’t conveniently gather where you can identify them as seperate from the people that you don’t want to kill. Assuming that you aren’t saying that the English should have killed all Irish because of a few terrorists.
I thing the question isn’t whether we can level the place, but whether we can do it without leaking plumes of Happy Fun Dust.
Israel just flew in under radar cover and bombed out Syria’s fancy new anti-aircraft defenses without losing a plane two weeks ago.
Actually there were so many informers,not to mention British agents within the Irish republican movement that we knew who a good many of the terrorists were at all levels and we easily had the capability to whack them out if we had so chosen to.
There was a very strong and very persistant rumour going around at the time in some British circles that British governments of all political persuasions were hoping the conflict would go on long enough for Ulster to indeed become part of the R.O.I. as we dont really want the place very much.
Ironically there were I.R.A. gangs in the border areas making literally millions of pounds yearly from smuggling tobacco products,drugs and vehicle fuel into the U.K. who would have lost out financially by the establishment of a united Ireland and whos commitment to the cause was weakened by this.
Of the millions made some did indeed find its way into the Republican coffers but most ended up in the off shore bank accounts of the individuals concerned who in their eyes had earned it.
So they have to bit hit first, many times and hard?
DIA says Iran used INC to get US into Invade Iraq
05-21-2004
Deja vu all over again
The lesson I draw from this is that it is proof positive that America and Israel could crush Iran and Syria with impunity. That even their most advanced technology newly minted in Russia is inferior to ours. What’s more important is that Syria and Iran know this because of Israel’s airstrike.
Iran and Syria cannot win, our forces are overwhelmingly superior.
Yes, they are afraid.
Hell, there’s nobody on the planet we cannot “crush with impunity”, we have a vast arsenal of thermonukes. So, of course, they fear that. But fear is not a positive unless it is counter-balanced by a degree of trust, the sense that your adversary is rational and can be reasoned with. If your potential enemy fears you without that sense, he is much more likely to reach the “nothing to lose” conclusion, he is more likely to conclude that war is inevitable, so he might as well get in the first strike.
And, of course, should that happen, the war-goons on our side will be in full triumphant cry! “See, told you so, they couldn’t be trusted, we told you so!”
Need it be pointed out that our recent behavior is unlikley to engender any such trust?
elucidator Ok, impunity is the wrong word. The thing though is the number of nukes we have are probably irrelevant. We don’t need nukes to stoneage every Muslim nation on Earth if we need to. We also have airpower in position to cripple the military of any Muslim country. We can project force from Morocco and the Sudan to Iran and Indonesia. The Israeli airstrike shows that we can get in without having to fear their anti-aircraft.
Everyone is obsessed with nukes, but our conventional force projection is pretty effective. There are two carrier battle groups off the coast of Iran right now. One Nimitz class aircraft carrier is in the top ten of biggest and most advanced air forces in the world. In terms of air power, Iran would have to deal with the US Air force the IDF Air force, and two Naval air forces, effectively four air forces that hopeless outclass theirs. Their air defenses would be eliminated within the first week, most of their planes would be dead on the ground.
Unless Iran already has a nuke, they are pretty well neutered. If they have a nuke, and they can hit Israel with it, then that’s some damage. If they can manage to sink an aircraft carrier that’s some damage. Past that, there isn’t much they can do other than be another brave insurgency hiding in the caves.
Clearly, at the time Bush put Iran in the Axis of Evil, he was laying plans for war. Right after all the troupes were positioned in Iraq after the fall of Saddam, and thus free for new campaigns. But reality intervened.