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On the other hand, hardware wants to be used. Also, an attack in Yemen is a message to Iran. Also #2, "Trump sends second aircraft carrier to Middle East in r

• silverquiet 2y ago
  There's a fabulous article[0] by William Langewiesche in "The Atlantic" that I read years ago to that effect; it's "An Extraordinarily Expensive Way to Fight ISIS" that follows a B-2 mission against a group of ISIS militants in the desert that shows how ridiculous they are against such an enemy. But yes, essentially they are enormous military-industrial capital investments, and it seems they just want to get used now and again. [0]https://archive.is/P8oUN https://archive.is/P8oUN
  • alabastervlog 2y ago
    This puts a pretty strong asterisk on other comments speculating that these probably aren't for Yemen, since they'd be overkill. They are overkill, but also we've used them in cases where better-scoped and cheaper solutions would have done the job, before. As for comments like "why move them there, they're built for attacking from the US?": sustained strikes. The mission in the linked article had the crews awake 33 hours and put tons of strain on their aircraft, all of which would lengthen the time to a follow-up flight to, I'd guess, several days at least. You do this if you are planning to (or want it to look like you're planning to) use the aircraft several times in within a single week.